Book Babes: Should We Stop Ignoring Romance Novels?

Getting back to that column on the slump in romance: let's start by saying that I can't say I've ever knowingly met a critic who would prove the validity of Margo Hammond's assertion, "Most critics consider happy endings to be anti-intellectual." But then I haven't been in the biz as long as she has, so maybe it's just a matter of who we know, and for now, we'll accept that as a reason why book review editors might have ignored romance novels--along with the belief that they all read the same, anyway, so why bother reviewing any of them?

Hammond's probably right to point out that the slump has more to do with long-term shifts in women's attitudes and life choices than with the momentary rise in sales for Dan Brown thrillers and political insider tomes. It's Ellen Heltzel's take that strikes me somewhat wrong, on two fronts. First, I don't believe it's the case, as she does, that "most readers need some guideposts to let them know what they're getting into" when they pick up stories that combine literary styling with good old-fashioned plot drive, and I would think that a century of authors like Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, John Le Carre, Arturo Perez-Reverte, and Alan Furst (just off the top of my head) might have nipped that line of thought in the bud. Second, I'm not prepared to dismiss the chick lit genre as easily as she does (and, to her credit, Hammond isn't, either). It's true that formulaic chick lit texts are beginning to appear, but that doesn't mean the genre "doesn't have much to offer candidates for review." (I think she meant "doesn't offer many candidates for review," come to think of it.) After all, there's plenty of formulaic literary fiction out there, and nobody seems to be suggesting we shouldn't review literary fiction as a result of that.

Despite the simplicity of Hammond's follow-up argument--Bling is not, I would submit, non-formulaic simply because its main characters aren't lily-white--it's hard not to agree with her conclusion that "book editors--and features editors who cover the world of books--should consider taking a harder look at what women readers are picking up these days." But "get[ting] over our old antipathy for the romance genre" isn't going to come about through reviewing chick lit. That's like saying we should get over our antipathy to science fiction by reading more fantasy.