Why Romance?

The perfume that she wore was from some little store
On the down side of town
But it lingered on long after she'd gone
I remember it well

And our fingers entwined like ribbons of light
And we came through a doorway somewhere in the night

Her long flowing hair came softly undone
And it lay all around
And she brushed it down as I stood by her side
In the warmth of her love

And she showed me her treasures of paper and tin
And then we played a game only she could win
And she told me a riddle I'll never forget
Then left with the answer I've never found yet

How long, said she, can a moment like this
Belong to someone
What's wrong, what is right, when to live or to die
We must almost be born

So if you should ask me what secrets I hide
I'm only your lover, don't make me decide

The perfume that she wore was from some little store
On the down side of town
But it lingered on long after she'd gone
I remember it well

And she showed me her treasures of paper and tin
And then we played a game only she could win
And our fingers entwined like ribbons of light
And we came through a doorway somewhere in the night

[“Affair on 8th Avenue,” Gordon Lightfoot]

     As I'm somewhat...old, most of my musical favorites are from decades long past. Gordon Lightfoot is prominent among them. It’s a pity he’s not better appreciated today, as he was one of the most accomplished lyricists of his time. The lyric above is a good demonstration of his romanticism.

     Lightfoot’s romantic lyrics never fail to evoke the romantic in me. (His contemporary “competitors” mostly evoke alimentary disturbances.) His imagery is unique and uniquely memorable. It puts me in mind yet again of a saying attributed to William Faulkner: that every novelist is a failed short-story writer, and every short-story writer is a failed poet. But this morning it also has me thinking about the question that forms the title of this piece, which is really a special case of a far more general question.

     To be maximally kind, most romance writers aren’t very good. That’s part of the reason contemporary romance writing features so much sex. The author knows she’s incapable of eliciting the sense of great, loving passion from her characters – see can see the lack of it in her own prose – so she falls back on something most of her readers can relate to: the physical experience of two persons coupling. Yet it’s not sex but the emotion of passionate, all-consuming love, at a height that most people will never experience in real life, that the reader is there for, which makes the substitution of sex for passion a cheat.

     The yearning to experience a strong emotion is why any consumer of fiction, in any genre or form, is there in the first place.

     Yes, I’ve written about this before. Yes, it’s something that “should” be “obvious”...though given how many hacks are out there churning out bad fiction – fiction whose primary impact is more emetic than dramatic – at mind-boggling rates, my habitual codicil that “obvious” means “overlooked” seems applicable.

     Now, I don’t think my own drivel is any great improvement on the Thundering Herd of Semi-Literate Poseurs with Word Processors. But every now and then, I’ve hit that special note for someone, and have been rewarded with a personal note of thanks, or a review like the following:

     Science fiction writer John C. Wright had something to say about this to us who lament our tiny readerships and pitiful revenue streams:

     I write for that one reader I will never see, the one who needs just such a tale as I can pen, in just such a time and place, some rainy afternoon or dark hour, when providence will bring my book into his hands. And he will open it, and it will not be a book, but a casement, from which he will glimpse the needed vision his soul requires of a world larger than our own, or a star in a heaven wider and higher than ours, a star aflame with magic more majestic than any star mortal astronomers can name.

     I humbly but strongly suggest you write for that unknown reader also, and not for worldly praise, or influence, or pelf, or applause. The world flatters popular authors, and the clamor of the multitude of brazen tongues is vanity. It is dust on the wind. The unknown reader will greet your work with love. It is a crown of adamant, solid and enduring.

     You will never meet that one reader, not in this life. In heaven he will come to you and fall on his face and anoint your feet with tears of gratitude, and you will stand astonished and humbled, having never suspected.

     And the key to it is emotion. Laura Schultz found in The Sledgehammer Concerto the emotional experience she seeks from her fiction reading. How many other readers received – or failed to receive – that experience, I’ll never know. But one did, which made the labor of conceiving and writing the book entirely worthwhile.

     Which makes the “sex instead of passion” tendency among contemporary writers of romance even more deplorable.

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     All the above is essentially prefatory to this: I was recently privileged to read an advance copy of Margaret Ball’s soon-to-be-released Regency fantasy romance Tangled Magic. It’s set in the same fantasy-Regency milieu as her marvelous novel Salt Magic. If anything, it’s even better than its predecessor: more magical and more romantic, though with many humorous and ironic sub-threads woven into its fabric. If you have a romantic bone in your body, this book will find and thrill it for you. Keep an eye out for it.

     Bravo, Margaret! At last, someone else who understands the point of all this suffering! And with that, it’s time to get back to my own steaming-pile-of-crap-under-construction. Have a nice day.