A Local Librarian on Romance Fiction

Jennifer Lohmann, a romance fan and a librarian at the Durham County Library (one of our favorites)(see a recent DC library haul here), was recently interviewed by the blog, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.   She often talks to librarians and library students about the romance genre.  Here are some of my favorite quotes:

...Outside of UNC, the database of fiction called NoveList (see if your local library has it—NoveList is AWESOME!!!) is headquartered here in Durham.  They asked me to come talk to their catalogers about romance so they would better understand the genre as they cataloged the books. I’m happy to talk to more public libraries (especially within driving distance) and library schools.  I love to talk about romance and am happy to promote the genre...I think the most awesome is just how many people did not expect to like the books they read.  One professor asked everyone to read Outlander and a lot of the class was surprised how much they liked the book, especially since there was the scene where Jaime beats Claire. When the class got to choose their own romance, many of the women were really shocked that they were entertained by the romance, no matter what they choose. 

...The most interesting argument I got into about the romance formula was with a couple my husband and I know.  They aren’t librarians, one is a nurse/poet and the other writes short stories.

The poet, a man, talked about how romances were formulaic and there was such a rigid structure.  His wife, the short story writer, defended the romance mostly by saying how all fiction is formulaic. If you write short stories, she said, there is a formula.  She referenced The New Yorker formula, which I didn’t know existed, not being a New Yorker reader.  If you don’t write in the manner of the New Yorker, you can not get a short story published.  She said the New Yorker set the formula for “literary fiction” and if he didn’t notice the formula being taught at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, he wasn’t paying attention.  If the person telling me about the romance formula is willing to have a conversation, I will usually talk about that conversation with the poet and short story writer.

The second is harder, I think.  The person either does not want to read about sex, in which case I can say that their are sweet romances with no sex, or they don’t seem to notice the, often graphic, sex in what they read.  I guess it’s different when the sex in the book is not about love.  Sex without love is more literary or something.  In this case, I usually ask what they read and then ask them about the sex in the books they read, i.e. if child sexual abuse in Toni Morrison, incest in Phillipa Gregory, or rape in The Color Purple are better examples of sex.  This is almost always a losing battle.  If women are enjoying the sex, clearly it’s trash.  Now if it’s forced on them or if they use sex to manipulate men, that’s literary...

I also love this quote from the comments:

From KinseyHolley:

I’m a librarian, and an English major, and a romance reader and a romance writer and a devourer of all manner of genre fiction, and when anyone dares insult me for my reading taste I get very Bitchy very quickly.  Do you consider yourself well read? I ask.  If they say yes, I ask them if they’ve read Rushdie, or Barnes, or….If they say no, I say—oh dear.  You mean you consider yourself well read because you follow Oprah’s list?  Or because twenty years ago someone forced you to read the Great Authors?  And then they stammer that I can’t make arbitrary judgments like that,  and I reply that they just did…

I’m generally so non-confrontational as to be timid, but the idea that it’s acceptable to judge someone else’s taste in reading, and to their face no less, burns me up.  Try to think of any other case in which people would consider this okay. 

[Photos of delphiniums and lilies from our garden this past weekend]