Romance vs NYC lit-fic establishment

[fjtorres]

Harpers magazine looks at a minor controversy on the borders of the literary establishment. Amusement to be found.

http://harpers.org/blog/2014/01/nyc-vs-hea/

A successful romance writer takes the New York Book review to task for ignoring books about women, for women, by women. Naturally Jonathan Franzen kneejerks on the establishment side.

This, from a New York establishment mainstay, like Harpers:

The New York literary industry stands at the front door and frets over the guest list, while everyone else is sneaking out the back. There are many better parties. Though e-books — and soon we’ll call them books — will not destroy the publishing industry any more than paperbacks did, they have already fractured and decentralized it. You can feel, in literary corners of the city, the depreciation of old-style New York–centered prestige. It manifests as a sense of lessening atmospheric pressure, a feeling that you do not have to be here to make it.

Beyond the growing irrelevancy of the establishment, a few more significant nuggets surface...

In the annals of New York literary history, husbands who relied on their wives to be their scribes and editors are embarrassingly plentiful. Romance has inverted the model. Last year, the Novelists Inc. conference in Myrtle Beach featured a panel intended to teach the husbands of romance novelists how to be their wives’ assistants. “Five of the women there,” Brenda Hiatt, one of the panelists, said to me later, “their husbands have retired from their jobs.”

You see a certain pattern: a husband who respects his wife’s success, knows he’s not her audience, and, not being a writer, evinces little anxiety about any of it. “Romance,” said Angela Knight, “is written by women, edited by women, sold by women, read by women.” The autonomy extends even into the marriage. Lynn Lorenz, who makes a good living writing gay erotica for women, told me that her family “loves the extra income; it’s bought us two cars, a new washer and dryer, dishwasher, microwaves, vacations.” Her husband, who works full-time, doesn’t read her books.

Successful commercial romance writers have economic power in their relationships and in the world. They have sales, fans, and control over the marketing of their product. Few of them see any reason to lose sleep over New York. Few even mention it in conversation. The literary industry is lucky Weiner is so pissed off at it. At least her anger is attention.

I dunno.
Seems to me she's using Franzen and the establishment to further promote herself and her books. Harpers included.
A win-win fight.

Things are changing fast.

[elemenoP]

I have heard about this feud between Weiner and Franzen before, but it was under the auspices of CHICK-LIT vs the literati. Weiner dislikes being marginalized as chick-lit, and now they have marginalized her even further by calling her a romance writer, which she is not.

eP

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I have heard about this feud between Weiner and Franzen before, but it was under the auspices of CHICK-LIT vs the literati. Weiner dislikes being marginalized as chick-lit, and now they have marginalized her even further by calling her a romance writer, which she is not.

eP

There is no such thing as bad publicity.
There are readers that will buy romance that wouldn't touch chick-lit.
Plus the "feud" got her coverage in Harpers. Without that I would never have heard of her, much less under such a favorable light: anybody who annoys Franzen must be one of the good guys.

[Scott Nielsen]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

anybody who annoys Franzen must be one of the good guys.

I like Franzen. Why does genre-readers have such a problem with some people taking reading and writing seriously?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Scott Nielsen

I like Franzen. Why does genre-readers have such a problem with some people taking reading and writing seriously?

The issue isn't Franzen's work. It is Franzen the public personna.