Why I read romance novels
Over the last two years, I have become deeply tangled in the strange world of the romance and women's erotica genres. At first, I thought this was a way to assuage the lack of first hand experience of romantic love or partnered sex in my life. This summer, it's become clear that what draws me to these books is something at once simpler and more complex.
The drive to understand how people work, what makes the gears inside humans go round, is one of the most powerful forces in my life. Almost from the first day I felt the compulsion to put pen to paper (9 January 1998), my writing reflects this. I wrote then, "I'm willing / to tear you apart / to find out what's inside / proper etiquette is telling me / that's not what I'm supposed to do." I have become a different person than the skinny, lonely seventh grader who scrawled that in her steno pad, but we share a common hunger: we are both ravenous to see the hidden workings. If I can't experience something for myself, I will question other people who have. If I find their answers inadequate against the mystery I am trying to unravel, I read.
Reading novels of romance and carnal passion started out as a way to explore what I wasn't seeing first hand and what delicate interviewing couldn't prompt my friends to reveal. It has certainly clarified my understanding of the once-opaque motivations that leads people to do the seemingly inexplicable for the sake of sex and love. Along the way, I have also garnered an abiding fascination with the romance industry and its unique business environment and an unexpected respect for writers who put their pens to the task of generating the romance-product that flows from many of the imprints distributed in your local grocery store.
As I have continued to read them, I have come to these books for more than vicarious orgasms and happy endings, and found more in them than a deeper understanding of human motivations. Romance and erotica function as modern myths, complete with archetypal figures and a certain cadence to the stories, a shape that they take, just as stories told by our primeval ancestors had a shape and distinct rhythm of their own. They don't have to reflect my values to resonate, and they don't have to be realistic to be true.
I read romance novels by the dozen because they satisfy my human need for stories that explain the things I cannot understand. I read them because they offer an allegorical balm for my gnawing questions about romance and sex and commitment. I read them because they offer a steadfast refrain: love happens.
The drive to understand how people work, what makes the gears inside humans go round, is one of the most powerful forces in my life. Almost from the first day I felt the compulsion to put pen to paper (9 January 1998), my writing reflects this. I wrote then, "I'm willing / to tear you apart / to find out what's inside / proper etiquette is telling me / that's not what I'm supposed to do." I have become a different person than the skinny, lonely seventh grader who scrawled that in her steno pad, but we share a common hunger: we are both ravenous to see the hidden workings. If I can't experience something for myself, I will question other people who have. If I find their answers inadequate against the mystery I am trying to unravel, I read.
Reading novels of romance and carnal passion started out as a way to explore what I wasn't seeing first hand and what delicate interviewing couldn't prompt my friends to reveal. It has certainly clarified my understanding of the once-opaque motivations that leads people to do the seemingly inexplicable for the sake of sex and love. Along the way, I have also garnered an abiding fascination with the romance industry and its unique business environment and an unexpected respect for writers who put their pens to the task of generating the romance-product that flows from many of the imprints distributed in your local grocery store.
As I have continued to read them, I have come to these books for more than vicarious orgasms and happy endings, and found more in them than a deeper understanding of human motivations. Romance and erotica function as modern myths, complete with archetypal figures and a certain cadence to the stories, a shape that they take, just as stories told by our primeval ancestors had a shape and distinct rhythm of their own. They don't have to reflect my values to resonate, and they don't have to be realistic to be true.
I read romance novels by the dozen because they satisfy my human need for stories that explain the things I cannot understand. I read them because they offer an allegorical balm for my gnawing questions about romance and sex and commitment. I read them because they offer a steadfast refrain: love happens.