Comments on: I don’t like french fries. They’re soggy, cold, mealy and tasteless. Oh, the hot, crisp, golden-brown ones? I don’t think of them as french fries…

By: Natalie

Natalie — Tue, 31 May 2005 17:20:00 +0000

Diana, I had to laugh at your struggle to focus the discussion on your main point. It was like a flashback to a hundred different loop discussions we've been a part of.

So, to be explicit:
I agree, it makes no sense to define a genre by its bad examples and try to remove any good examples from said genre.

Natalie

By: Diana Peterfreund

Diana Peterfreund — Tue, 31 May 2005 02:32:00 +0000

Oh, Elizabeth, you have to share more of this story! I will corner you in reno and ply you with cosmopolitans until you spill! She kicked you out becuase you wouldn’t kow-tow to her narrow-minded take on worthwhile writing and prejudiced view of what counted as “literary fiction?” Good for you on not shutting up. I don’t think I’d have much to learn from someone who took that attitude either!

By: Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Elizabeth Kerri Mahon — Mon, 30 May 2005 23:42:00 +0000

Great blog once again Diana. I was in a workshop with a fairly well known writer who continually bashed chick-lit, despite the fact that I stated more than once when I started the workshop that was what I wrote and was proud of it. She finally stated that she felt that it was reducive (is that the right word) to women writers because of the whole shoe-shopping, publishing assistant stereotype of chick-lit. Mind you, she felt that the only fiction to write was literary fiction. This despite the fact that her books were often shelved next to books like Jennifer Weiner, and other chick-lit writers. She even bashed the genre in her latest manuscript, until we told her that it sounded a bit mean spirited.
She finally tossed me out of the workshop, because I kept saying I wrote chick-lit.

By: D.

D. — Sun, 29 May 2005 22:12:00 +0000

Found some, but I’m always glad to get some recs My other issue with some critics is the shallowness… if a heroine cares what she looks like, they immediately deem her shallow. And stupid, too. Sigh. Reminds me of Legally Blonde. I mean, she wasn’t!

By: Dorothy

Dorothy — Sun, 29 May 2005 03:17:00 +0000

Kudos to you, Diana! I agree with the others. Not nice to bash any genre. What’s good reading for some might not be for others. What’s all the fuss about anyway? I just don’t get it. I love chick lit books – reading and writing them. I don’t like vampire books, but does that make me a critic? A personal observation, maybe, but a qualified one? Hardly not. So, what makes these naysayers qualified if they don’t even understand the genre in the first place? *scratching head*

By: Diana Peterfreund

Diana Peterfreund — Sat, 28 May 2005 22:17:00 +0000

Nobody likes dumb characters, D, in any genre. And I have read many a chick lit where the characters are far from dumb, indeed,w here they seem to be the only ones around that have any brains at all! I actually dislike the ones where the characters don’t seem to have two brain cells to rub together (I didn’t care for 32AA, which is one a lot of the supporters seem to be holding up as an excellent example — I mean, the boyfriend might as well have been holding a neon sign saying, ‘I’m a cruel vicious jerk who is going to fuck you over!’) but there are many where the heroines are very intelligent and capable. I hope you’ve found some, and I’d be happy to make some recs.

By: D.

D. — Sat, 28 May 2005 20:40:00 +0000

Their attitude seems to be that if it's any good, it's not chick lit.

That's the part that doesn't make sense to me.

**That part doesn't make sense to me, either. Just as judging a genre by a few books (hangs head in shame). And what's with all the fashion obsessed rants? If all those people hate fashion, just who is buying Vogue, and Elle, and other well-selling magazines? Oh. I've got an idea. Thank you!
But I'll stand firmly on my too many dumb heroines peeve. Since that, I've read quite a lot of books, and many of them just make me want to clutch my head and weep, "Oh, God, give the poor woman some brains." But then, so do my office roommates.

By: Keris Stainton

Keris Stainton — Sat, 28 May 2005 15:28:00 +0000

What a great post. Great title too.

I was recently told by an agent that I should describe my book as ‘contemporary women’s fiction’ rather than ‘chick lit’ because ‘chick lit’ is pejorative.

But, to me, chick lit means something specific and it’s not about shoes. (Btw, where are all these shoe obsessed books? I haven’t read them.) You describe it beautifully, Diana.

I keep wanting to say that we should reclaim the term, but … it’s not feminism, it’s not the “c” word … then again … there are some similarities.

By: Diana Peterfreund

Diana Peterfreund — Sat, 28 May 2005 02:30:00 +0000

OH, Sorry, Candy — I didn’t mean to portray that. I did say that it was the comment posts that caught my interest. To be honest, I think it’s good when people discuss what they see as failings in a certain genre. It gets people looking at them and maybe beginning to hold higher standards. I do not like it however, when people begin to think that the low standard defines the genre. [continuing to beat that dead horse]

I hate the deus ex machina endings I commonly see in some lower-quality chick lit. It was one of the first things I said to my editor when we started talking about revisions — I am very firm in the belief that for my heroine to deserve and achieve her happy ending that she will have to take control of her own destiny and fight for it and make substantive changes to her worldview. If I have any kind of “moral” to my stories, then that’s it

Liz dearest, as always you crack me up! And I think it’s even weirder when it’s the industry folks or the press who try to convince them that they aren’t part of the crowd — No, Ms. Crusie, don’t call it romance! It’s too GOOD for that! — and then the writers have to spend their time saying that they don’t view it as a diss to hear their writing put in the genre they meant it for. Genres aren’t “good” or “bad” — books IN those genres are “good” and “bad”.

It really is like stereotypes. The more I talk abotu this, the more I find myself using language we use to discuss any kind of intolerance. I’m reminded of something that happened in Australia. While we were abroad, anti-American sentiment was at it’s peak, especially in Europe. One day, I was sitting around the hostel with a table of Europeans, a few Kiwis and two other Americans, and one girl, a Dane, was talking about how she hates Americans, and how they’re all boorish and uneducated and culturally bereft and obese and lazy and prejudiced… and we just sat there blinking at her until she noticed. She said, “Well, you guys aren’t like Americans.” I said, “Who is like an American?” She said, “Homer Simpson.”

Right. And the average French man is Pepe Le Pew.

By: Shannon McKelden

Shannon McKelden — Fri, 27 May 2005 23:53:00 +0000

To address your question, Diana–

>>What I am really curious about is how one gets away with defining a genre solely based on the cons,< <

There are people in the world who focus on negatives no matter what. It doesn’t matter how much positive there is, they will pick OUT the negatives just to present them to the world. You cannot ask these people to say what they DO like, because their minds are so focused on what they don’t like, and ruminating on and regurgitating what they don’t like, that they never even formulate in their minds what the DO like. They get away with it, because it is a free world and they can say what they want, and they will always find someone to agree with them. (Thankfully, we can find someone to agree with US, too!)

What’s that saying? If you look for the negative, you’ll always find it? Something like that.

And whoever made the point about “jealousy” being a factor, you bet it is! (And, Candy, don’t jump down our throats, because I’m not saying that EVERYONE who bashes chick lit, or any other genre, is jealous…just some…a LOT, especially among the writing community). There will always be people who will bash chick lit or romance or whatever (or the some of the literary community bashing genre fiction), just because they are jealous of the success of these genres.

And then there are others who do the bashing to make themselves feel better about themselves. Kinda like playground bullies.

Just wish people understood the difference between having reading preferences and putting down other people’s reading/writing preferences. Grrr…

Shannon