Are You a Romantic?

Every business day, I get a newsletter called “Shelf Awareness” in my e-mail, delivering the latest news from the world of books, bookshops, booksellers, libraries, writers, and publishers. When owner-booksellers retire, a shop either closes or comes under new ownership. Sometimes, beforehand, there’s an announcement of a shop for sale. 

 

I’ve always kind of wondered how the numbers compare, old shops closing vs. new shops opening. It’s hard for me to tell, because I get both kinds of news. Also, shops like mine, selling majority of used books -- or some may sell no new books at all -- often don't get counted. But I can’t help noticing lately how many new shops are opening with a plan to specialize in romance books. 

Romance readers are coming out of the closet, no longer hiding their reading preference as a guilty pleasure. According to the New York Times, print sales of romance books almost doubled in only three years, from “18 million copies in 2020 to 39 million in 2023,” and specialty bookshops have boomed along with the books. 

 

When it comes to genre fiction, I generally reach for mysteries. Although now and then I yield to the temptations of potato chips and “chick lit” (usually stories featuring bookshops or set in Michigan), in general science fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance do not usually appeal to me. Don’t get me wrong! I have no quarrel with the readers of these genres. (Some order their books through my shop!) When it comes to escape reading or what I call “comfort books,” there are different roads for different tastes. 

My taste: A country road

My own choices in comfort books tend more in the direction of children’s or teen novels I remember loving years ago (Palmer Brown’s The Silver Nutmeg; Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series; Anne of Green Gables and the sequels; or Farley’s The Black Stallion or Marguerite Henry’s wonderful horse stories) – or, other times, novels or memoirs set in the past (most recently, Mary Webb’s enchanting Precious Bane). Little Women is a book I still find romantic, despite its formulaic construction. When Jo and the professor finally kiss under the umbrella (absolutely NOT in the balcony of a theatre, as one modern film version has it!) and speak their simple words of love to each other, how could any love scene be more moving than that?

At Dog Ears Books TODAY!

Years ago, as the young, stay-at-home mother of a toddler, I fell briefly into a romance habit at an old bookstore in Traverse City, Arnold’s on Union Street. Many will remember the place. Mrs. Arnold had an almost unlimited stock, it seemed, of paperback novels featuring young women in love and newly wed, all written by a writer named Kathleen Norris – not the Kathleen Norris (b. 1947) of Dakota but an earlier KN (b.1880). Those books were definitely like potato chips: always another! After a while, though, I started to become annoyed. All the young, beautiful heroines grew ever younger-looking and more beautiful in their times of trial and poverty! How, I wondered, did that work? But a much more annoying trick of the author’s was her repeated reach for a deus ex machina to dissolve the heroine’s deepest existential problems.

 

Let’s say (as often happened) that the main character married a handsome ne’er-do-well who could not support a family, perhaps even turned out to be an alcoholic. Divorce was unthinkable in the Kathleen Norris code of morals! No, her heroine could absolutely not choose divorce, even with a “Mr. Right” standing in the wings! That left the novelist two possibilities for reaching a happy ending: either the inconvenient husband could die, or it could be discovered that the marriage, for whatever reason, had never been valid in the first place. Either way, the beautiful, long-suffering protagonist was set free to marry the loyal, upstanding man who had loved her so chastely all along. Mighty handy! Perhaps a little too handy?

Also available -- and only $9 each!

(One of the charming side features of Ms. Norris's novels was the California setting. The main character always had a garden and always made wonderful little suppers of fresh vegetables.)

 

Such were the romance novels of the early 20^thcentury. (When I reluctantly confessed this stretch of my reading life to my mother, she shrugged and said airily that she had read many Kathleen Norris books. I had no idea!) Romance readers now expect more in the way of “sizzle,” it seems. A very different, protofeminist view of romance, broadly understood (see below), can be found in the sometimes-strange novels of the sometimes-anonymous Elizabeth von Arnim. 

 

Years ago, when I announced myself to the world as a romantic pragmatist, a fellow philosopher friend said divorce had cured her of romance, but by romantic I didn’t mean hearts and flowers and Valentine’s Day dinners. I had in mind the older, broader sense, that of the Romantic period in art and literature: a return to nature, valuing feelings along with facts, even striving toward “impossible” goals. 

My romantic meadow: native grasses, wildflowers

The Artist understood. Once he and I talked about the most romantic books we’d each read, both having in mind a novel clothed in mystery and something like fantasy (though not ‘fantasy’ as the genre called that is understood today). His was Hudson’s Green Mansions; mine was (I’ll give the English title) The Wanderer, by Alain-Fournier. When I described the French novel to David, it reminded him of Hudson’s book, and when I read Hudson’s Green Mansions for myself, I could see a similarity with The Wanderer, a similarity not in the stories or settings but in a dreamlike mood the two books shared.

 

What does the word ‘romance’ mean to you, and what do you think of as a ‘romance' -- or a 'romantic' novel? Is romance in your mind a narrow genre – and if so, does it appeal to you? If you read in the genre, who is your favorite author, and why? Or do you look for romance in the classics – say, Jane Eyre? Or maybe you see 'romance' as I do, following the period of art and literature known as Romanticism. There are no wrong answers!

 

But heavens! So many questions! Will anyone be brave enough to answer any? I only have one friend who says she never reads fiction, so I won’t expect a comment from her....

 

Next question: What do you think explains this surge in romance reading? I’ll tell you what I think one reason is (not that anyone asked). I think the gruesomeness of American politics at this juncture in our history is sending people of all ages, more and more, to romance and fantasy and all manner of speculative fiction. The real world is too much with us! How can we even sleep at night? As for me, I have now hit my bottom line, and I’m digging in my heels, and here it is: 

 

I’ve refrained from name-calling, treated those whose views oppose mine with respect, sent love to all, but now I’ve reached the end of my rope, because the bottom line as I see it is that no matter what anyone’s most dearly held opinions are about the economy, about immigration, about abortion, about the war in Gaza or the war in Ukraine or equal rights for all Americans, about minimum wage or social security or the cost of health care, affordable housing or the border with Mexico, the composition of the Supreme Court, the existence of the Electoral College, space travel or cryogenics — whatever anyone’s views about any of these or any other issues may be, putting a sociopath in the White House (for the second time!) is not the answer. Crazy is not the solution to a single problem. Crazy rights no wrongs. And if you vote for crazy, you cannot, in truth, call yourself sane or good or righteous, regardless of how often you go to church or pray over your dinner table. 

 

Should I have thought longer about making such a public statement? Crawled back in the closet and prayed about it some more? Kept quiet lest I hurt someone’s feelings or lose a friend or put my business in jeopardy? There is too much at stake.

 

(And by the way, if you vote third party or don’t plan to vote at all — because you think the Democrats’ candidate is “just as bad” or you see her as a warmonger — the effect will be just as if you had voted for crazy, and you know it, so don’t pretend otherwise. You’ll be putting crazy back in the White House, so don’t expect “policies” of any kind.) 

 

So I'll say it again. Crazy is a solution to nothing. Crazy rights no wrongs. Crazy is what the rule of law, with all its human flaws and shortcomings, is designed to prevent. And I am enough of a romantic that I have not given up hope for this country – my country! – that I love and for our beautiful world.

To my Republican friends: 

If your biggest concern is eliminating abortions, and you don’t care about anything else if only you can accomplish it, work toward that end. Devote your money and time and energy to providing pregnant women with support. If you’re most worried about the gun industry's being allowed to continue to market and sell military-style assault weapons to civilians (whether you own stock in the industry or believe you would be able to defend yourself against the U.S. army and U.S. Navy and Air Force if you and the government disagreed — whatever!), spend your time and energy and hard-earned income on that issue. But don’t vote for a lying sociopath and trust him to make your dearest dreams come true. That has never been his mission. It’s HIS dearest dreams that matter to him, and nothing else, and there is more honor among thieves than there is in DJT’s promises.

"Donald Trump is not cognitively fit to be president. The presidency is a position that requires an occupant able to act strategically and carefully. That Trump is not such a person is obvious if you watch the man. And so, for years, his supporters have said: Don’t watch the man. Don’t listen to what he says. Look at the results. But those results reflected the power and ability of others to check Trump, to inhibit him when he could not inhibit himself. It is not just the man who is now unfit; it is the people and institutions that surround him.” - Ezra Klein, “What’s Wrong with Donald Trump?” 10/22/2024

It’s worth looking up and taking the time to read or listen to Ezra Klein’s whole piece. It’s in the New York Times but also available as a podcast from many, many online sites you probably use. His basic point (for those who will not follow through on my suggestion) is that Trump isn’t any different from what he ever was, so it’s not senility we should worry about. The reason there weren’t more disasters during his presidency was that there were people holding him in check and, when necessary, not acting on his orders (e.g., to cut FEMA funds to California because Californians were not his diehard supporters), whereas this time around, should he be elected again, he will be surrounded only by loyalists and sycophants, and there will be little restraint on his impulses. 

 

To all:

You didn’t expect this abrupt change of course in today’s post? Neither did I when I set out to write about the surge in romance novels and bookshops. But here it is, all of it, and there’s a little more on one of my other blogs, “Without a Clear Focus,” a piece on my #1 most beloved philosopher, Henri Bergson, whose birthday was October 18 and someone I take as an exemplar.

There. I've said my piece. Bye-bye for today.