"Do they think I stand on the street corner and try to sell this shit?"
May 10, 2019 9:52 AM Subscribe
Danielle Steel: "The author has written 179 books, which have been translated into 43 languages. Twenty-two of them have been adapted for television, and two of those adaptations have received Golden Globe nominations. Steel releases seven new novels a year—her latest, Blessing in Disguise, is out this week—and she's at work on five to six new titles at all times. In 1989 Steel was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having a book on the New York Times best-seller list for the most consecutive weeks of any author—381, to be exact." A 2019 interview with Glamour magazine.
"When a book just flows, I love it. Some of my ideas will start off as mundane, but as I write them they become magical—and I can never predict it. Other times it can feel like dragging an elephant across the table, but I get through it."
Does the woman honestly believe her work is ever magical? I haven't been able to read her books since I was about 14, because they're all in the "dragging an elephant across the table" category for me, and painfully, unreadably bad. Yes, her sheer level of output is impressive, but there's no denying its quantity is achieved at the expense of its quality.
posted by orange swan at 10:10 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Does the woman honestly believe her work is ever magical? I haven't been able to read her books since I was about 14, because they're all in the "dragging an elephant across the table" category for me, and painfully, unreadably bad. Yes, her sheer level of output is impressive, but there's no denying its quantity is achieved at the expense of its quality.
posted by orange swan at 10:10 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
ckridge, it’s not Danielle Steele but check out This is Love’s episode on a popular romance writer and her process/life.
posted by CMcG at 10:12 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by CMcG at 10:12 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
(Steele has nine children.)
Welp, all the other parentheticals can pack it in for the day
posted by Beardman at 10:12 AM on May 10, 2019 [40 favorites]
Welp, all the other parentheticals can pack it in for the day
posted by Beardman at 10:12 AM on May 10, 2019 [40 favorites]
I always wanted to read a Danielle Steel novel. Is there anyone out there who's read enough of them that they want to suggest one they think is the best?
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 10:15 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Merricat Blackwood at 10:15 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Is there anyone out there who's read enough of them that they want to suggest one they think is the best?
I read ALL of my mom's Danielle Steel books when I was in middle school. I remember thinking Zoya was actually good, but take that with about twelve grains of salt as I was a kid and also it was like 25 years ago.
posted by leesh at 10:22 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I read ALL of my mom's Danielle Steel books when I was in middle school. I remember thinking Zoya was actually good, but take that with about twelve grains of salt as I was a kid and also it was like 25 years ago.
posted by leesh at 10:22 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Bwa ha ha!!! Oh Danielle Steel. I commented, long ago and under a different name, on my two favorite Author Pics from the backs of her books. I still can't decide which is my favorite: "The 80's Duvet" or the one in which she is posing in front of a life-size painting of herself, taking care to wear the same jewelry in both.
I've read a few of her books. They're okay. She uses a lot of unnecessary commas and every once in a while she writes sentences that lack any verbs. And not in an artsy, let-me-paint-a-picture-for-you sort of way, more of an I-forgot-to-make-my-characters-do-anything-in-this-sentence sort of way.
posted by Gray Duck at 10:23 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
I've read a few of her books. They're okay. She uses a lot of unnecessary commas and every once in a while she writes sentences that lack any verbs. And not in an artsy, let-me-paint-a-picture-for-you sort of way, more of an I-forgot-to-make-my-characters-do-anything-in-this-sentence sort of way.
posted by Gray Duck at 10:23 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
I used to think: surely someone who sells so many books must be good!
Popularity and excellence are two different qualities. Whenever I look at the New York Times bestseller list I'm always stunned by just how bad so many of its titles are. It's kind of like popularity in high school: some of the popular kids are popular because they have genuinely stellar qualities, and some of them are popular for other, much more superficial reasons (i.e., because they look a certain way and/or have a certain kind of confidence) and are actually just assholes who are peaking early.
posted by orange swan at 10:27 AM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
Popularity and excellence are two different qualities. Whenever I look at the New York Times bestseller list I'm always stunned by just how bad so many of its titles are. It's kind of like popularity in high school: some of the popular kids are popular because they have genuinely stellar qualities, and some of them are popular for other, much more superficial reasons (i.e., because they look a certain way and/or have a certain kind of confidence) and are actually just assholes who are peaking early.
posted by orange swan at 10:27 AM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
Okay, can we put everything else aside for a moment and talk about that desk? I mean, holy shit that desk. That is an enormous "fuck you, I am a fucking superstar" desk and it is afraid of nothing.
I know jack shit about Danielle Steel's writing, but that desk is goddamn amazing. Seriously, let's just have a thread about that desk. Several. That. Desk.
posted by phooky at 10:28 AM on May 10, 2019 [69 favorites]
I know jack shit about Danielle Steel's writing, but that desk is goddamn amazing. Seriously, let's just have a thread about that desk. Several. That. Desk.
posted by phooky at 10:28 AM on May 10, 2019 [69 favorites]
It can be magical to her, in that when you're writing and it's really flowing, it feels like it's writing itself and the characters are doing things that surprise you. You become a conduit rather than a director. That feels amazing. But that feeling does not necessarily mean that you're writing WELL.
On the one hand she must be doing something right, because people keep buying (and presumably reading) her books. But there's no accounting for taste. I know plenty of people who'd never touch Danielle Steel but swear by Stephen King. I find his stuff completely hacky and mostly unreadably bad. But it's what a lot of people like.
I like a moderate challenge to my reading. The puzzle-writing of Faulker is just as much a turn-off. But everyone draws the line in a different place.
posted by rikschell at 10:28 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
On the one hand she must be doing something right, because people keep buying (and presumably reading) her books. But there's no accounting for taste. I know plenty of people who'd never touch Danielle Steel but swear by Stephen King. I find his stuff completely hacky and mostly unreadably bad. But it's what a lot of people like.
I like a moderate challenge to my reading. The puzzle-writing of Faulker is just as much a turn-off. But everyone draws the line in a different place.
posted by rikschell at 10:28 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Steel is a creature of habit. She gets to her office—down the hall from her bedroom—by 8:00 A.M., where she can often be found in her cashmere nightgown. In the morning she'll have one piece of toast and an iced decaf coffee (she gave up full-throated caffeine 25 years ago). As the day wears on, she'll nibble on miniature bittersweet chocolate bars.
I can't bring myself to read a Danielle Steel novel--I read some when I was eleven, I remember them fondly, they were bad enough to make even my eleven year old self chortle in horror--but I would gladly read a novel about her anytime. She sounds fascinating.
posted by Aravis76 at 10:30 AM on May 10, 2019 [16 favorites]
I can't bring myself to read a Danielle Steel novel--I read some when I was eleven, I remember them fondly, they were bad enough to make even my eleven year old self chortle in horror--but I would gladly read a novel about her anytime. She sounds fascinating.
posted by Aravis76 at 10:30 AM on May 10, 2019 [16 favorites]
Here's a Vanity Fair article about that desk. I can not stop obsessing about how awesome that desk is.
posted by phooky at 10:31 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by phooky at 10:31 AM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
come for the desk, stay for the millennial bashing
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:33 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:33 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
CBC: Guess the author: Danielle Steel or Stephen Harper?
posted by Kabanos at 10:33 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Kabanos at 10:33 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
I mean, it's formulaic pap but so is Clive Cussler or Dick Francis. It's all perfectly well-written (and indeed in the case of Dick Francis, very well written.) It is probably not necessary for people to jump into this thread to add their name to the list of people who find Danielle Steele's writing beneath them.
I'm not a fan because I don't like the gender stereotyping or even really the genre, but 179 books? A bazillion best-sellers and a bajillion zillion dollars she made herself? Doing something she loves and that hurts nobody?
posted by DarlingBri at 10:35 AM on May 10, 2019 [38 favorites]
I'm not a fan because I don't like the gender stereotyping or even really the genre, but 179 books? A bazillion best-sellers and a bajillion zillion dollars she made herself? Doing something she loves and that hurts nobody?
posted by DarlingBri at 10:35 AM on May 10, 2019 [38 favorites]
I actually hate the desk (while admitting that it is incredibly well made for what it is), and the level of clutter on it and around it would drive me insane, but when you have accumulated a $350 million fortune by writing and have spent a record-breaking number of consecutive weeks on the NYT bestseller list, I suppose you're entitled to indulge in some high camp-level preening.
posted by orange swan at 10:39 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by orange swan at 10:39 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Was just about to jump in with a comment like DarlingBri's - what if we reframed as "Individual creative person makes a whole bunch of stuff that people value highly enough to pay for over and over again." She made a thing (herself!) and became wildly successful, and deserves just as much credit as any "disruptor" in Silicon Valley. Hell, she made money in the publishing industry - she probably deserves MORE credit.
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 10:41 AM on May 10, 2019 [22 favorites]
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 10:41 AM on May 10, 2019 [22 favorites]
[does double take]
That's her desk?? Not just a pile of books in the foreground of the picture??
I... uh.
posted by clawsoon at 10:46 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
That's her desk?? Not just a pile of books in the foreground of the picture??
I... uh.
posted by clawsoon at 10:46 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
'I want to die face-first in my typewriter.'I had an aunt who died gardening. Not a bad way to go, doing what you love.
posted by clawsoon at 10:47 AM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
These are the pitfalls amateur writers have: never revising and never reading others' work.
Mmm kay this also describes some modern canon White Dudes whom no one would dare describe as amateur, so do with that what you will. It is certainly not how I would characterize “amateur” writers, and if we’re using it to describe Danielle Steele, then the word has lost all meaning.
As a general rule of thumb if someone has millions of diehard fans and their books have spoken, somehow, to millions of people, that is an indication that they are, in fact, saying something, regardless of whether you are willing or able to hear it.
Different writers gravitate to different facets of storytelling, which is a vast and enormously complicated art that can accommodate almost any set of tastes. People write what they like and don’t spend a lot of time on the stuff they don’t, and the readers who have similar tastes respond to that. Personally I find it useful to learn from the authors I dislike. It’s so much simpler to figure out what they’re doing that’s resonating for millions of people when I don’t care about the rest.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:51 AM on May 10, 2019 [25 favorites]
Mmm kay this also describes some modern canon White Dudes whom no one would dare describe as amateur, so do with that what you will. It is certainly not how I would characterize “amateur” writers, and if we’re using it to describe Danielle Steele, then the word has lost all meaning.
As a general rule of thumb if someone has millions of diehard fans and their books have spoken, somehow, to millions of people, that is an indication that they are, in fact, saying something, regardless of whether you are willing or able to hear it.
Different writers gravitate to different facets of storytelling, which is a vast and enormously complicated art that can accommodate almost any set of tastes. People write what they like and don’t spend a lot of time on the stuff they don’t, and the readers who have similar tastes respond to that. Personally I find it useful to learn from the authors I dislike. It’s so much simpler to figure out what they’re doing that’s resonating for millions of people when I don’t care about the rest.
posted by schadenfrau at 10:51 AM on May 10, 2019 [25 favorites]
I'm just impressed that she actually writes everything that comes out under her name. I figured she'd gone the Franklin W. Dixon route long ago and was just redlining manuscripts from a battalion of ghostwriters now.
TBH it's possible the writing would be better in some literary sense if she did that, and just gave plot outlines to other writers to spend more time with and flesh out more completely, but kudos to her if that's not what she wants to do.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:53 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
TBH it's possible the writing would be better in some literary sense if she did that, and just gave plot outlines to other writers to spend more time with and flesh out more completely, but kudos to her if that's not what she wants to do.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:53 AM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
I also read tons of Danielle Steele in junior high. After a while they're all the same (everyone's always going for drinks at the 21 Club!) but I bet I'd still think they're pretty fun. If somebody wants to pick a Danielle Steele book for a FanFare book club I'm in.
posted by something something at 10:56 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by something something at 10:56 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Does the woman honestly believe her work is ever magical?
Transmuting her own thoughts and words into hundreds of best-sellers and a $350 million net worth is, if not magic, then at least alchemy.
posted by Daily Alice at 10:58 AM on May 10, 2019 [28 favorites]
Transmuting her own thoughts and words into hundreds of best-sellers and a $350 million net worth is, if not magic, then at least alchemy.
posted by Daily Alice at 10:58 AM on May 10, 2019 [28 favorites]
"Amateur" is how one describes someone who is a beginner and/or unpaid. The word one uses to describe someone who is established and/or earning money for their work but whose work isn't good by objective/aesthetic standards is "hack".
posted by orange swan at 11:00 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by orange swan at 11:00 AM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
As a general rule of thumb if someone has millions of diehard fans and their books have spoken, somehow, to millions of people, that is an indication that they are, in fact, saying something, regardless of whether you are willing or able to hear it.
This is true, but it doesn’t follow that what they’re saying has all that much merit. See, also, Dan Brown and The Secret and every day’s reliable bestseller, The Daily Mail. Writing that sells on that scale undoubtedly speaks to desires that people have—for love or sex or money or vindication or to be in on a secret or to punish an enemy. It doesn’t follow that the work has any truths to tell and is worth engaging with except critically as a guide to understanding the desires in question. I definitely agree that Steel is a professional but I don’t think that means that the question whether her writing is any good is a pure matter of taste. Lots of popular things are bad, in the sense that what they are selling is bad for you.
posted by Aravis76 at 11:04 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
This is true, but it doesn’t follow that what they’re saying has all that much merit. See, also, Dan Brown and The Secret and every day’s reliable bestseller, The Daily Mail. Writing that sells on that scale undoubtedly speaks to desires that people have—for love or sex or money or vindication or to be in on a secret or to punish an enemy. It doesn’t follow that the work has any truths to tell and is worth engaging with except critically as a guide to understanding the desires in question. I definitely agree that Steel is a professional but I don’t think that means that the question whether her writing is any good is a pure matter of taste. Lots of popular things are bad, in the sense that what they are selling is bad for you.
posted by Aravis76 at 11:04 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I'm amazed books from my youth are still around, and I'm over 50. She's the Barbara Cartland of the Bestsellers list.
posted by hugbucket at 11:05 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by hugbucket at 11:05 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
People who don't care to overthink a plate of beans enjoy her books.
posted by hugbucket at 11:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by hugbucket at 11:07 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
I date the end of civilization to the moment when they stopped putting a description of what the book is about, on the back cover of bestsellers, and used that space for a big picture of the author, instead.
posted by thelonius at 11:08 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 11:08 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
A few years ago, I actually had to read Hotel Vendome for work; it was the first time I had read her, though of course I knew who she was. I kept waiting, waiting, waiting for the plot to advance. And then at the end, I was like “that’s IT??” Ah well, nice to finally know what the fuss was all about.
posted by Melismata at 11:10 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Melismata at 11:10 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I found a guide to Danielle Steel's novels: Every Danielle Steel Novel Summarized in 140 Characters or Less.
posted by clawsoon at 11:11 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 11:11 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I think jj's.mama is comparing Steel to amateurs, not saying she is one.
posted by biogeo at 11:12 AM on May 10, 2019
posted by biogeo at 11:12 AM on May 10, 2019
The word one uses to describe someone who is established and/or earning money for their work but whose work isn't good by objective/aesthetic standards is "hack".
No, it most certainly isn't. A hack is someone who exploits their creative skill and craft for commercial benefit with no regard to how they feel about the work itself. (Hi! I've done that! I don't recommend it, long term.) Jeff Koons, the ex-commodities broker from back when commodities brokers were REAL pieces of shit, comes to mind, but who can know what's in a man's heart.
The way to describe someone who is commercially successful and pleases themselves but whom you hate so much that you insist they fail by some sort of imaginary "objective" standards would be...different. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader. Unless you can describe those objective standards. That would be interesting.
And like...it's not like I never describe anything as crap. I do. But implicit is that it is crap to me or to the set of people with whom I share enough of a sense of taste and worldview to feel some sort of affinity. Going the hard "objective" route puts you in company with -- off the top of my head -- every single misogynist that likes to shit on women's fiction mostly because women like it, so whatever they find in it must be worthless. And also maybe Ayn Rand, ironically.
So like. Maybe don't?
posted by schadenfrau at 11:12 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
No, it most certainly isn't. A hack is someone who exploits their creative skill and craft for commercial benefit with no regard to how they feel about the work itself. (Hi! I've done that! I don't recommend it, long term.) Jeff Koons, the ex-commodities broker from back when commodities brokers were REAL pieces of shit, comes to mind, but who can know what's in a man's heart.
The way to describe someone who is commercially successful and pleases themselves but whom you hate so much that you insist they fail by some sort of imaginary "objective" standards would be...different. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader. Unless you can describe those objective standards. That would be interesting.
And like...it's not like I never describe anything as crap. I do. But implicit is that it is crap to me or to the set of people with whom I share enough of a sense of taste and worldview to feel some sort of affinity. Going the hard "objective" route puts you in company with -- off the top of my head -- every single misogynist that likes to shit on women's fiction mostly because women like it, so whatever they find in it must be worthless. And also maybe Ayn Rand, ironically.
So like. Maybe don't?
posted by schadenfrau at 11:12 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
→ Doing something she loves and that hurts nobody?
The trees might want a word with her
posted by scruss at 11:15 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
The trees might want a word with her
posted by scruss at 11:15 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
It doesn’t follow that the work has any truths to tell and is worth engaging with except critically as a guide to understanding the desires in question.
...
Lots of popular things are bad, in the sense that what they are selling is bad for you.
You...genuinely do not see the assumptions about the purpose of art (let alone that it has a purpose) and the values of "good" and "bad" embedded in these statements?
Nowhere is it written that art has to tell truths to be valuable, and I am preeeeetty interested to find out who determines what's "good for you," and on what basis.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:17 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
...
Lots of popular things are bad, in the sense that what they are selling is bad for you.
You...genuinely do not see the assumptions about the purpose of art (let alone that it has a purpose) and the values of "good" and "bad" embedded in these statements?
Nowhere is it written that art has to tell truths to be valuable, and I am preeeeetty interested to find out who determines what's "good for you," and on what basis.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:17 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Is she telling her readers how to overthrow the patriarchy, how to support it, or how to survive within it?
posted by clawsoon at 11:19 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 11:19 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I’m happy to define what I take to be the objective standards under which both Steel and Rand write / wrote bad fiction. They’re a combination of moral and aesthetic standards. Morally, I think they both have awful ideas about gender and money and that their stories sell those ideas and not much else, despite Rand’s attempt to disguise her misogyny and money-worship as some sort of philosophy. Aesthetically, I think their sentences are unattractively constructed and—linked to the moral problem—their characterisation is flat and trivial. I don’t have a problem with women’s fiction—lots of romance novelists are great—just with these particular women authors, and also with many men who share both their ethical and aesthetic failings (A Song of Ice and Fire comes immediately to mind). And of course I see that there are value-claims embedded in what I’m saying—they’re value-claims I believe in.
posted by Aravis76 at 11:24 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by Aravis76 at 11:24 AM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I'm pretty sure she's just trying to entertain them.
For reference, one of the reasons this irritates me so much is because this sort of criticism mostly seems to pop up when it's about women enjoying themselves. I don't think that's an accident. Women don't need a reason to want to entertain themselves; they don't need to learn anything from it; they don't need it to be good for them. That they enjoy it is enough. Women's pleasure has inherent value, full fucking stop.
You can have separate conversations about whether or not the work has other effects, many of which might be terrible. But somehow that never seems to happen.
And I'll make the same argument about Dan Brown -- like Danielle Steele, he isn't trying to do anything other than tell a story that entertains people, and hopefully himself (AFAIK, and if he's gone off the meglomaniacal deep end, please do link so I can laugh). He does this by going hard on the things he's good at (and presumably enjoys) -- precisely timed, relentless, and fractal cliffhangers, and high-ish concept premises that lean hard on his favorite tropes. Whether or not you're aware of the difficulty involved in that subset of storytelling skills is not really my brief, unless you've tried to do those exact things repeatedly. If you have, and you've figured out a system, you should probably tell someone. Or start churning them out. There's money in it, after all.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:26 AM on May 10, 2019 [21 favorites]
For reference, one of the reasons this irritates me so much is because this sort of criticism mostly seems to pop up when it's about women enjoying themselves. I don't think that's an accident. Women don't need a reason to want to entertain themselves; they don't need to learn anything from it; they don't need it to be good for them. That they enjoy it is enough. Women's pleasure has inherent value, full fucking stop.
You can have separate conversations about whether or not the work has other effects, many of which might be terrible. But somehow that never seems to happen.
And I'll make the same argument about Dan Brown -- like Danielle Steele, he isn't trying to do anything other than tell a story that entertains people, and hopefully himself (AFAIK, and if he's gone off the meglomaniacal deep end, please do link so I can laugh). He does this by going hard on the things he's good at (and presumably enjoys) -- precisely timed, relentless, and fractal cliffhangers, and high-ish concept premises that lean hard on his favorite tropes. Whether or not you're aware of the difficulty involved in that subset of storytelling skills is not really my brief, unless you've tried to do those exact things repeatedly. If you have, and you've figured out a system, you should probably tell someone. Or start churning them out. There's money in it, after all.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:26 AM on May 10, 2019 [21 favorites]
And of course I see that there are value-claims embedded in what I’m saying—they’re value-claims I believe in.
...then do you understand what "objective" means?
posted by schadenfrau at 11:27 AM on May 10, 2019
...then do you understand what "objective" means?
posted by schadenfrau at 11:27 AM on May 10, 2019
For the record, I VERY much personally dislike both Steele and Brown, for many of the same reasons. But I dislike them. I also think they're bad for society, on the whole. But that is an entirely different thing than stating that they are objectively terrible books, and I think this is a distinction people don't often understand.
Unfortunately it's also the failure to make that distinction that causes fans of those books to shut down and dismiss you as hopelessly condescending when you try to talk to them about, say, the gender criticisms.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:30 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Unfortunately it's also the failure to make that distinction that causes fans of those books to shut down and dismiss you as hopelessly condescending when you try to talk to them about, say, the gender criticisms.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:30 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Yes, I think so. The belief that there are objective moral and aesthetic values is a belief I hold. That doesn’t really contradict my holding an objective theory of value—I can believe that beliefs about eg physics are always held by humans, humans being the only entities we know of who make assertions about physics (or value), without believing that physics is a purely subjective business.
posted by Aravis76 at 11:31 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Aravis76 at 11:31 AM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
When I was pregnant and on bed rest, I read a ton of Danielle Steel and Mary Higgins Clark novels. It was super comforting. My grandmother had PILES of Steel and Higgins Clark novels and I read them growing up and it was fun to read them again. They're formulaic, they talk a lot about food and clothes (I want ALL the details about what people are eating and wearing), and it was a great way to pass the time when I was in a situation where I was bored and also scared.
These novels are certainly not any worse than your average Tom Clancy or Dan Brown novel. (Probably better than Clancy because they aren't full of weird conservative politics.)
posted by Aquifer at 11:31 AM on May 10, 2019 [11 favorites]
These novels are certainly not any worse than your average Tom Clancy or Dan Brown novel. (Probably better than Clancy because they aren't full of weird conservative politics.)
posted by Aquifer at 11:31 AM on May 10, 2019 [11 favorites]
they talk a lot about food and clothes (I want ALL the details about what people are eating and wearing)
Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels were like this about food too. After reading for three pages about a sandwich, I was relieved he didn't describe the dump the detective took the next morning.
posted by thelonius at 11:35 AM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels were like this about food too. After reading for three pages about a sandwich, I was relieved he didn't describe the dump the detective took the next morning.
posted by thelonius at 11:35 AM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
I found a guide to Danielle Steel's novels: Every Danielle Steel Novel Summarized in 140 Characters or Less.
These descriptions do NOT get it right. For instance, The Promise (which I read MORE THAN ONCE) is described as "A hip couple are determined to get married, despite familial disapproval. A terrifying crisis separates them, but can it keep them apart?" which sounds kinda boring. Let me tell you in 140 characters what REALLY happens in that one:
Rich guy wants to marry poor girl, his mom disapproves, they get into a car wreck, girl's face is jacked, the mom bribes her to leave with the promise of a NEW FACE, she thinks he'll find her, mom lies that she DIED. etc.
She gets a FREAKING NEW FACE, how does that not merit a mention??
Anyway, maybe her books are silly but their visions of glamour and life crises and whatnot really entertained me as a youngster. My mom still reads and enjoys them. So when you dis Danielle Steel and her readers, you are dissing MY MOM. I'd prefer if you didn't.
posted by leesh at 11:42 AM on May 10, 2019 [28 favorites]
These descriptions do NOT get it right. For instance, The Promise (which I read MORE THAN ONCE) is described as "A hip couple are determined to get married, despite familial disapproval. A terrifying crisis separates them, but can it keep them apart?" which sounds kinda boring. Let me tell you in 140 characters what REALLY happens in that one:
Rich guy wants to marry poor girl, his mom disapproves, they get into a car wreck, girl's face is jacked, the mom bribes her to leave with the promise of a NEW FACE, she thinks he'll find her, mom lies that she DIED. etc.
She gets a FREAKING NEW FACE, how does that not merit a mention??
Anyway, maybe her books are silly but their visions of glamour and life crises and whatnot really entertained me as a youngster. My mom still reads and enjoys them. So when you dis Danielle Steel and her readers, you are dissing MY MOM. I'd prefer if you didn't.
posted by leesh at 11:42 AM on May 10, 2019 [28 favorites]
The word one uses to describe someone who is established and/or earning money for their work but whose work isn't good by objective/aesthetic standards is "hack".
No, it most certainly isn't. A hack is someone who exploits their creative skill and craft for commercial benefit with no regard to how they feel about the work itself.
Yes, it certainly is. Intent and/or self-awareness does not necessarily play a role in whether someone is a hack or not. The word "hack" means to cut, sever, or shape with crude, unskilful, irregular, or ruthless blows or strokes. Hacks can be those who deliberately do shite work in order to produce a greater volume of work at a higher speed, or because they know they can sell poor work as long as it has certain qualities, or they can be those who simply aren't capable of doing better work, who perhaps don't even realize that their work isn't good.
Going the hard "objective" route puts you in company with -- off the top of my head -- every single misogynist that likes to shit on women's fiction mostly because women like it, so whatever they find in it must be worthless. And also maybe Ayn Rand, ironically.
So like. Maybe don't?
I'm not going to not criticize a hack romance writer because there are misogynists out there who shit on things women like. There are good romance novels out there written by talented, competent writers, and there are also hack romance writers who write flat, lifeless, mechanical prose featuring one-dimensional characters, who can't plot to save their lives, who try to write historical romances without doing the research necessary to get the period details right, and who reinforce damaging patriarchal norms, etc., and I'm damn well going to say so as I see fit. I'm not leaving the critical field to the misogynists and resigning myself to the role of cheerleader.
posted by orange swan at 11:52 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
No, it most certainly isn't. A hack is someone who exploits their creative skill and craft for commercial benefit with no regard to how they feel about the work itself.
Yes, it certainly is. Intent and/or self-awareness does not necessarily play a role in whether someone is a hack or not. The word "hack" means to cut, sever, or shape with crude, unskilful, irregular, or ruthless blows or strokes. Hacks can be those who deliberately do shite work in order to produce a greater volume of work at a higher speed, or because they know they can sell poor work as long as it has certain qualities, or they can be those who simply aren't capable of doing better work, who perhaps don't even realize that their work isn't good.
Going the hard "objective" route puts you in company with -- off the top of my head -- every single misogynist that likes to shit on women's fiction mostly because women like it, so whatever they find in it must be worthless. And also maybe Ayn Rand, ironically.
So like. Maybe don't?
I'm not going to not criticize a hack romance writer because there are misogynists out there who shit on things women like. There are good romance novels out there written by talented, competent writers, and there are also hack romance writers who write flat, lifeless, mechanical prose featuring one-dimensional characters, who can't plot to save their lives, who try to write historical romances without doing the research necessary to get the period details right, and who reinforce damaging patriarchal norms, etc., and I'm damn well going to say so as I see fit. I'm not leaving the critical field to the misogynists and resigning myself to the role of cheerleader.
posted by orange swan at 11:52 AM on May 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
Since y'all brought it up, who are the great romance novelists?
posted by clawsoon at 11:55 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 11:55 AM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
(Sincere question, BTW. I need something outside my usual fare.)
posted by clawsoon at 11:56 AM on May 10, 2019
posted by clawsoon at 11:56 AM on May 10, 2019
I like Courtney Milan and Tessa Dare a lot!
posted by leesh at 12:01 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by leesh at 12:01 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Oh, also, Jasmine Guillory and Alyssa Cole (who has historical and contemporary series that are both really good).
posted by leesh at 12:02 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by leesh at 12:02 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Nora Roberts.
posted by Aquifer at 12:04 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Aquifer at 12:04 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Rose Lerner if you like meticulously researched historical about the middle class and Heather Rose Jones if you're here for magical Ruritanian lesbian romance, also meticulously researched.
posted by storytam at 12:09 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by storytam at 12:09 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
There are love-story novelists who are great because they write realist novels in the modern sense, and love-story novelists who are great because they write Rrrrrromance that Sir Richard Burton would enjoy. I'd recommend Heyer's _A Civil Contract_ and Carla Kelly's _A Wedding Journey_ for the first. The second depends more on one's taste, I think -- do you like history, or elegy, or epic fantasy, or??
posted by clew at 12:12 PM on May 10, 2019
posted by clew at 12:12 PM on May 10, 2019
(Surely a hack is more likely to be called that after the hack horses that were job-of-work, get-you-there horses instead of your showoffy hunter or park carriage horse? Is all over Trollope but `hacking' for everyday riding makes it at least to the 1940s in USian English. )
posted by clew at 12:14 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by clew at 12:14 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
For romance with a capital R, I've recently got very into Mary Burchell, who admittedly has been dead for a long time and is very dated but on the other hand can write excellent pining, has a really charming fixation with opera and music, and is also one of the few Harlequin writers to be one of the Righteous Among the Nations.
posted by Aravis76 at 12:15 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Aravis76 at 12:15 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Steel is a creature of habit. She gets to her office—down the hall from her bedroom—by 8:00 A.M., where she can often be found in her cashmere nightgown. In the morning she'll have one piece of toast and an iced decaf coffee (she gave up full-throated caffeine 25 years ago). As the day wears on, she'll nibble on miniature bittersweet chocolate bars.
This sounds like a great set-up for the cold open of a Columbo episode. The question is—will she be the victim or the murderer?
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:26 PM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
This sounds like a great set-up for the cold open of a Columbo episode. The question is—will she be the victim or the murderer?
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:26 PM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
This sounds like a great set-up for the cold open of a Columbo episode.
I believe there's at least one episode that's about a murder mystery writer who kills someone for stealing their ideas, or something, too lazy to look it up.
posted by Melismata at 12:30 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I believe there's at least one episode that's about a murder mystery writer who kills someone for stealing their ideas, or something, too lazy to look it up.
posted by Melismata at 12:30 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is dumb, but I feel like you didn't finish scrolling through your own link, where later down the page we have:
who try to write historical romances without doing the research necessary to get the period details right
But this, more than anything, tells me you don't actually know much about the genre you're trying to defend, or what goes into actually writing any of these things. You still haven't characterized those "objective" standards you claim to hold dear, except by listing more sets of personal value judgments ("flat, lifeless prose," or something similar? Exactly how I would describe Atwood, as it happens), and I don't think you should try. You've made my point already.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:32 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
: performed by or suited to a person who works or writes purely for the purpose of earning moneyI'm starting to think I might be the only person in this conversation with professional experience in the field, as it were.
who try to write historical romances without doing the research necessary to get the period details right
But this, more than anything, tells me you don't actually know much about the genre you're trying to defend, or what goes into actually writing any of these things. You still haven't characterized those "objective" standards you claim to hold dear, except by listing more sets of personal value judgments ("flat, lifeless prose," or something similar? Exactly how I would describe Atwood, as it happens), and I don't think you should try. You've made my point already.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:32 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
I believe there's at least one episode that's about a murder mystery writer who kills someone for stealing their ideas, or something, too lazy to look it up.
The one that springs immediately to my mind involves a successful two-man mystery writing team in which one writer kills the other writer because he (the victim) was planning to dissolve their partnership and begin writing his own titles, which would have exposed the murderer as the talentless hack he really was. It starred Jack Cassidy as the villain and was directed by a young Stephen Spielberg!
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:47 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
The one that springs immediately to my mind involves a successful two-man mystery writing team in which one writer kills the other writer because he (the victim) was planning to dissolve their partnership and begin writing his own titles, which would have exposed the murderer as the talentless hack he really was. It starred Jack Cassidy as the villain and was directed by a young Stephen Spielberg!
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:47 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Sigh. To clarify: claims or cries of historical accuracy in historical romance are, to put it mildly, a huge red flag. By and large historical romance has genre conventions, first, and historical fidelity only occasionally, and only -- and I stress this bit -- when it serves the story itself. This isn't unique to historical romance, in particular, but one of the things that actual romance writers complain about behind the scenes is that when they try to offer actual historical details that run contrary to those conventions -- as MANY of them do -- the readers freak out and ding them for being, ironically, historically inaccurate, because they have been trained to see genre conventions as history.
Historical novels in general do this. Adaptations of true life stories also do this. Real life only rarely perfectly serves story; storytellers generally pick story, and readers (or viewers) always pick story, even when they don't know it.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:49 PM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
Historical novels in general do this. Adaptations of true life stories also do this. Real life only rarely perfectly serves story; storytellers generally pick story, and readers (or viewers) always pick story, even when they don't know it.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:49 PM on May 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
I've been thinking a lot about "women's media" as of late, and in particular my own avoidance of same.
For me Danielle Steele fell into the same category that I personally placed soap operas, melodramatic "chick flicks", Hallmark channel shows, and Lifetime channel shows. But since I've been watching a lot of classic films lately it's forced me to confront and deal with some of the very movies I avoided.
In several cases what I found was that the technical quality wasn't bad. The acting was top-notch, the plot was actually not as far-fetched as I'd assumed it would be. From what I've read about Danielle Steele plots, they sound far-fetched as hell, but she's got to have some amazing technical chops. So after realizing I could no longer definitively say that these kinds of media were inferior quality, I thought long about what my grudge against them really was. And came up with a theory:
For a lot of the classic Hollywood weepies, the Hallmark films, Danielle Steele novels, and other similarly-sneered-at "women's media", I think I was reading a specificintent and purpose into it; I was getting some sense that these films/books/etc. were meant to pacify women who were dissatisfied with the inequities in their own lives, giving them a catharsis moment to leach away some of the dissatisfaction they were feeling about their own circumstances so that they would be calmed and go back to the status quo. Kind of like the "Two Minutes' Hate" in 1984.
This may very well have all been in my own head - in fact it almost certainly is - but it's something that I've thought about a lot. Since it also does a dis-service to the genuine artists in these fields; even if you do write in a formula, that takes genuine skill.
So it may not be Danielle Steele that I'm saying "no thanks" to so much as it's late-stage patriarchy.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:52 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
For me Danielle Steele fell into the same category that I personally placed soap operas, melodramatic "chick flicks", Hallmark channel shows, and Lifetime channel shows. But since I've been watching a lot of classic films lately it's forced me to confront and deal with some of the very movies I avoided.
In several cases what I found was that the technical quality wasn't bad. The acting was top-notch, the plot was actually not as far-fetched as I'd assumed it would be. From what I've read about Danielle Steele plots, they sound far-fetched as hell, but she's got to have some amazing technical chops. So after realizing I could no longer definitively say that these kinds of media were inferior quality, I thought long about what my grudge against them really was. And came up with a theory:
For a lot of the classic Hollywood weepies, the Hallmark films, Danielle Steele novels, and other similarly-sneered-at "women's media", I think I was reading a specificintent and purpose into it; I was getting some sense that these films/books/etc. were meant to pacify women who were dissatisfied with the inequities in their own lives, giving them a catharsis moment to leach away some of the dissatisfaction they were feeling about their own circumstances so that they would be calmed and go back to the status quo. Kind of like the "Two Minutes' Hate" in 1984.
This may very well have all been in my own head - in fact it almost certainly is - but it's something that I've thought about a lot. Since it also does a dis-service to the genuine artists in these fields; even if you do write in a formula, that takes genuine skill.
So it may not be Danielle Steele that I'm saying "no thanks" to so much as it's late-stage patriarchy.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:52 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
So there's a set of shared false details in historical romance as a genre? Huh. A list of those sounds like it would make an interesting article all on its own.
posted by clawsoon at 12:53 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by clawsoon at 12:53 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I dunno. Wasn't there a recent FPP about how all these Hallmark movies were actually empowering, in that they called out things like abuse and posted phone numbers for DV hotlines, etc.?
posted by Melismata at 12:54 PM on May 10, 2019
posted by Melismata at 12:54 PM on May 10, 2019
I have found a new litmus test: if you don’t think Danielle Steele’s desk is fucking delightful, we will likely not get along well
posted by Automocar at 1:02 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Automocar at 1:02 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I wonder if the desk is partly a way to remind people how she spells her name. It's really interesting that everyone adds that "e" on the end; I wonder why? Does Steele just seem more like a name, somehow?
posted by sockermom at 1:12 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by sockermom at 1:12 PM on May 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
I think it's a sort of an automatic reaction to the 'e' at the end of 'Danielle'. Also, 'Danielle' codes as a little fancy in American English, so maybe we're trying to pair it with a fancier last name. I expect Daniel Steele has a similar problem.
posted by phooky at 1:17 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by phooky at 1:17 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
EmpressCallipygos: For a lot of the classic Hollywood weepies, the Hallmark films, Danielle Steele novels, and other similarly-sneered-at "women's media", I think I was reading a specificintent and purpose into it; I was getting some sense that these films/books/etc. were meant to pacify women who were dissatisfied with the inequities in their own lives, giving them a catharsis moment to leach away some of the dissatisfaction they were feeling about their own circumstances so that they would be calmed and go back to the status quo. Kind of like the "Two Minutes' Hate" in 1984. This may very well have all been in my own head - in fact it almost certainly is - but it's something that I've thought about a lot. Since it also does a dis-service to the genuine artists in these fields; even if you do write in a formula, that takes genuine skill.
I've heard similar mixed feelings about beauty standards for women: On the one hand, being forced into unrealistic beauty standards by patriarchy; on the other hand, genuine skill and awesomeness being put into making oneself beautiful, skill which is scorned because it's "women's work". Is there a similar dynamic going on there?
posted by clawsoon at 1:17 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I've heard similar mixed feelings about beauty standards for women: On the one hand, being forced into unrealistic beauty standards by patriarchy; on the other hand, genuine skill and awesomeness being put into making oneself beautiful, skill which is scorned because it's "women's work". Is there a similar dynamic going on there?
posted by clawsoon at 1:17 PM on May 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
It's been a good week for camp, and honestly learning about Danielle Steel's desk has just been the most exquisite capstone. I love it. I love everything about it. If I suddenly had a $350 million net worth I would instantly wear only cashmere pajamas and would commission a desk shaped like whatever had got me that net worth. Her books aren't my particular yum, but I think I love her.
posted by kalimac at 1:39 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by kalimac at 1:39 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
She is a publishing machine and I envy that: "..can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with...it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear...and it absolutely will not stop.Ever. " Seriously, remember when Jobs stated that, "real artists ship"?
Anyway, she reminds me a lot of Barbara Cartland who cranked out romance books everyday and who later became Princess Diana's step-grandmother. It is a fortune built on words selling fantasy; genre fantasy. A genre that that has been deemed in the realm of women/girls. As stated by EmpressCaliipygo the tension is not in the formulaic plot but in the uneasy alliance of rules enforcement, sedation and rerouted power between the creator and audience.
I think about the Witch of Endor. She lives in a place where spiritual power is a monopoly of the male priesthood, which enforces it's monopoly with "suffer not a witch to live amongst you"and yet the anointed King of Israel seeks her surreptitiously to summon the prophet Samuel after the usual spiritual monopoly fails. In the end she comforts and feeds Saul after Samuel gives him the bad news of his future. It is a very much an insider/outsider story: transgression , power, consolation; a bit like genre writing and reading with its ambivalence between creator, audience and broader society's judgements.
Tl;Dr: judge not lucre, desks or cashmere pajamas.
posted by jadepearl at 1:58 PM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
Anyway, she reminds me a lot of Barbara Cartland who cranked out romance books everyday and who later became Princess Diana's step-grandmother. It is a fortune built on words selling fantasy; genre fantasy. A genre that that has been deemed in the realm of women/girls. As stated by EmpressCaliipygo the tension is not in the formulaic plot but in the uneasy alliance of rules enforcement, sedation and rerouted power between the creator and audience.
I think about the Witch of Endor. She lives in a place where spiritual power is a monopoly of the male priesthood, which enforces it's monopoly with "suffer not a witch to live amongst you"and yet the anointed King of Israel seeks her surreptitiously to summon the prophet Samuel after the usual spiritual monopoly fails. In the end she comforts and feeds Saul after Samuel gives him the bad news of his future. It is a very much an insider/outsider story: transgression , power, consolation; a bit like genre writing and reading with its ambivalence between creator, audience and broader society's judgements.
Tl;Dr: judge not lucre, desks or cashmere pajamas.
posted by jadepearl at 1:58 PM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
I'm not a fan because I don't like the gender stereotyping or even really the genre, but 179 books? A bazillion best-sellers and a bajillion zillion dollars she made herself? Doing something she loves and that hurts nobody?
Does it really hurt nobody? Even excepting any potential subconscious impact the tropes being used might have on the reader, how do other authors in the field feel about the amount of space in the market Steel is taking up? And I'd ask the same thing about Dan Brown or Stephen King or James Patterson or Tom Clancy. Or J.K. Rowling even, except she doesn't keep pumping books out endlessly, just retcons. Or even Jim Butcher, who I fucking love, and who isn't nearly as big as these others, but he still is a big name in the urban fantasy field which is otherwise mostly women.
(And then the next question is whether there's anything that could possibly be done about it, which requires a discussion of how much of the continued success of these mega-authors is driven by pure inertia driven by people just seeking what they know versus how much promotional effort the publishers put into the mega-authors compared to their regular authors, which, as I never successfully got a job in publishing, I couldn't tell you, though certainly, I would bet people would find the big-name-authors' books just fine if their promotional budgets, whatever they are, were quartered, and even more of that money devoted to smaller authors. And yes, I understand that the New York Times Best Sellers are what fund a lot of the other books that get published. The problem, as ever, is capitalism and the way it treats artists.)
posted by Caduceus at 1:58 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Does it really hurt nobody? Even excepting any potential subconscious impact the tropes being used might have on the reader, how do other authors in the field feel about the amount of space in the market Steel is taking up? And I'd ask the same thing about Dan Brown or Stephen King or James Patterson or Tom Clancy. Or J.K. Rowling even, except she doesn't keep pumping books out endlessly, just retcons. Or even Jim Butcher, who I fucking love, and who isn't nearly as big as these others, but he still is a big name in the urban fantasy field which is otherwise mostly women.
(And then the next question is whether there's anything that could possibly be done about it, which requires a discussion of how much of the continued success of these mega-authors is driven by pure inertia driven by people just seeking what they know versus how much promotional effort the publishers put into the mega-authors compared to their regular authors, which, as I never successfully got a job in publishing, I couldn't tell you, though certainly, I would bet people would find the big-name-authors' books just fine if their promotional budgets, whatever they are, were quartered, and even more of that money devoted to smaller authors. And yes, I understand that the New York Times Best Sellers are what fund a lot of the other books that get published. The problem, as ever, is capitalism and the way it treats artists.)
posted by Caduceus at 1:58 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I gotta stop posting on Metafilter when I've slept poorly. My compound sentences are just a nightmare. Sorry.
posted by Caduceus at 2:19 PM on May 10, 2019
posted by Caduceus at 2:19 PM on May 10, 2019
Does it really hurt nobody? Even excepting any potential subconscious impact the tropes being used might have on the reader, how do other authors in the field feel about the amount of space in the market Steel is taking up?
I would actually suggest that romance writers are Danielle Steel fans. Romance is not like other genres in many respects, and both romance readers and writers act distinctly in the marketplace. Romance is the best-selling genre on Kindle and it is chock-a-block with Romance series writers self-publishing hundreds of thousands of books, and a breath-taking number of them are crushing it with the Danielle Steel formula. It is a huge and fascinating sub-culture!
posted by DarlingBri at 2:21 PM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
I would actually suggest that romance writers are Danielle Steel fans. Romance is not like other genres in many respects, and both romance readers and writers act distinctly in the marketplace. Romance is the best-selling genre on Kindle and it is chock-a-block with Romance series writers self-publishing hundreds of thousands of books, and a breath-taking number of them are crushing it with the Danielle Steel formula. It is a huge and fascinating sub-culture!
posted by DarlingBri at 2:21 PM on May 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
how do other authors in the field feel about the amount of space in the market Steel is taking up
🎵 art 🎶 is not 🎵 a zero-sum 🎶 game 🎵
posted by oulipian at 2:23 PM on May 10, 2019 [20 favorites]
🎵 art 🎶 is not 🎵 a zero-sum 🎶 game 🎵
posted by oulipian at 2:23 PM on May 10, 2019 [20 favorites]
I mean, it's formulaic pap but so is Clive Cussler
tangential to this actual thread but idk if you're familiar with his earliest books? bc they're like. fucking insane. barftastic. appalling racism, vicious sneering homophobia, virulent misogyny. like shit that made me as physically ill to read as the grossness in many popular subreddits does. i get the biggest fucking yikes when people recommend him in asks.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:48 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
tangential to this actual thread but idk if you're familiar with his earliest books? bc they're like. fucking insane. barftastic. appalling racism, vicious sneering homophobia, virulent misogyny. like shit that made me as physically ill to read as the grossness in many popular subreddits does. i get the biggest fucking yikes when people recommend him in asks.
posted by poffin boffin at 2:48 PM on May 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
I'm starting to think I might be the only person in this conversation with professional experience in the field, as it were.
who try to write historical romances without doing the research necessary to get the period details right
But this, more than anything, tells me you don't actually know much about the genre you're trying to defend, or what goes into actually writing any of these things. You still haven't characterized those "objective" standards you claim to hold dear, except by listing more sets of personal value judgments ("flat, lifeless prose," or something similar? Exactly how I would describe Atwood, as it happens), and I don't think you should try. You've made my point already.
I'm not going to continue this conversation with you, schadenfrau, not because I don't have substantive counterarguments for everything you've said, but because I find your "I am the only one who has professional experience in this matter, you don't know much about the romance genre, and you should not try to respond to me because you can't and have already proved by being wrong that I'm right" stance to be inappropriately condescending and overbearing.
posted by orange swan at 3:49 PM on May 10, 2019 [15 favorites]
who try to write historical romances without doing the research necessary to get the period details right
But this, more than anything, tells me you don't actually know much about the genre you're trying to defend, or what goes into actually writing any of these things. You still haven't characterized those "objective" standards you claim to hold dear, except by listing more sets of personal value judgments ("flat, lifeless prose," or something similar? Exactly how I would describe Atwood, as it happens), and I don't think you should try. You've made my point already.
I'm not going to continue this conversation with you, schadenfrau, not because I don't have substantive counterarguments for everything you've said, but because I find your "I am the only one who has professional experience in this matter, you don't know much about the romance genre, and you should not try to respond to me because you can't and have already proved by being wrong that I'm right" stance to be inappropriately condescending and overbearing.
posted by orange swan at 3:49 PM on May 10, 2019 [15 favorites]
clawsoon, have you ever read Eva Ibbotson? Her romance books are set in pre-WWII Europe, and usually has an academic/bohemian setting. They are really appealing in an old-fashioned way, even though her heroines are inveterate helpers and perhaps not the ideal role model for womanhood in this day and age. My favorites are perhaps "The Magic Flute" (reissued as "The Reluctant Heiress"), "The Morning Gift" and "A Glove Shop in Vienna and Other Stories".
posted by of strange foe at 3:49 PM on May 10, 2019
posted by of strange foe at 3:49 PM on May 10, 2019
of strange foe: clawsoon, have you ever read Eva Ibbotson? Her romance books are set in pre-WWII Europe, and usually has an academic/bohemian setting.
I have read exactly two romance novels in my life. :-) (And I only read them because I realized I was afraid of GIRL COOTIES and wanted to get over that fear. As I recall, one of them featured a man who was actually a seven-foot-tall alien. Mostly what I learned was that the whole trope about "women don't like sex" was completely, utterly wrong, if the contents of those novels and the sales figures of the genre in general were anything to go by.)
posted by clawsoon at 4:08 PM on May 10, 2019
I have read exactly two romance novels in my life. :-) (And I only read them because I realized I was afraid of GIRL COOTIES and wanted to get over that fear. As I recall, one of them featured a man who was actually a seven-foot-tall alien. Mostly what I learned was that the whole trope about "women don't like sex" was completely, utterly wrong, if the contents of those novels and the sales figures of the genre in general were anything to go by.)
posted by clawsoon at 4:08 PM on May 10, 2019
Visiting her house at 2080 Washington St. in San Francisco is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in Danielle Steel, San Francisco history, or gorgeous views. You can walk / hike to the top of Lafayette Park and get a great view of Fort Mason and the bay. The house is the Spreckels Mansion, owned by the famous sugar baron and, eventually, his widow. Who, as you may read, had quite a life story. Steel has encouraged the hedge around the house to grow to dimensions that put those in the Hamptons to shame. You can admire her eclectic collection of Land Rovers and other jeep-y vehicles, all in black. Interestingly, the exterior of the mansion is falling apart, though given the difficulty of doing anything with a historic building in San Francisco, that may not be intentional neglect. Then you can watch a family in the park build a balloon arch, or at least that's what was going on when I was there. Not the most convenient to access via transit, but worth a visit if you're in the area.
(I realize I should note I am not doxing her here, her ownership is long-standing, well covered in the media, and even the guy sitting next to me on the park bench was aware of it.)
posted by wnissen at 4:50 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
(I realize I should note I am not doxing her here, her ownership is long-standing, well covered in the media, and even the guy sitting next to me on the park bench was aware of it.)
posted by wnissen at 4:50 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
clawsoon, sorry to say that Ibbotson books are rather chaste... I thought of couple of more historical romances: Marrying Stone by Pamela Morsi (barefoot hill girl & musicologist) and As You Desire by Connie Brockway (which takes place in Egypt). Jennifer Crusie has a number of contemporaries that tickled my funny bone. My favorite is perhaps the less well known Manhunting.
posted by of strange foe at 4:59 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by of strange foe at 4:59 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I had an aunt who died gardening. Not a bad way to go, doing what you love.
Please please please let me die in my sleep.
posted by bendy at 5:30 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Please please please let me die in my sleep.
posted by bendy at 5:30 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
🎵 art 🎶 is not 🎵 a zero-sum 🎶 game 🎵
It must be nice to be able to afford to purchase everything you want, but it's a little unseemly to brag about your financial situation. My entertainment budget says otherwise.
posted by Caduceus at 6:09 PM on May 10, 2019
It must be nice to be able to afford to purchase everything you want, but it's a little unseemly to brag about your financial situation. My entertainment budget says otherwise.
posted by Caduceus at 6:09 PM on May 10, 2019
Like are you fucking kidding me? Every time a person decides to engage with a given piece of art or culture, they are using time out of their life they will never get back to do so! Every human being, if they're lucky, has approximately 30,000 days on this planet! Of course it's a zero-sum game! Every fucking second someone spends rewatching The Matrix or Friends or rereading Harry Potter or reading yet another Danielle Steel novel is another second they're not watching or reading or listening to something new by someone new that they've never engaged with before! Saying art isn't a zero-sum game shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of time and mortality! FFS.
Gods, sorry to get all "someone's wrong on the internet here" but fuck. I wish I was biologically immortal, must be nice.
posted by Caduceus at 6:20 PM on May 10, 2019
Gods, sorry to get all "someone's wrong on the internet here" but fuck. I wish I was biologically immortal, must be nice.
posted by Caduceus at 6:20 PM on May 10, 2019
they're like. fucking insane. barftastic. appalling racism, vicious sneering homophobia, virulent misogyny.
I did not know that, I'm sorry. I read four Dirk Pitt novels 20 years ago on a beach. In future, I will refrain from recommending Cussler to people looking for series reads, thanks.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:24 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
I did not know that, I'm sorry. I read four Dirk Pitt novels 20 years ago on a beach. In future, I will refrain from recommending Cussler to people looking for series reads, thanks.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:24 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
So it may not be Danielle Steele that I'm saying "no thanks" to so much as it's late-stage patriarchy.
posted by EmpressCallipygos
I recently finished reading Trollope's "Can You Forgive Her?". It's the story of four women trying to figure out what was the best life for an intelligent spirited woman to live, and the answer Trollope gives (in the kindest possible way) is "To be forced to marry the man who can best use her and then bear him a son (or else be a retiring spinster or a vulgar old woman)." I'm still pretty depressed about it, because Trollope was so sure he was giving you the right answer, and it's charming of you to think any other answer could be correct but don't worry, you'll soon see that he was correct all along.
posted by acrasis at 6:42 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos
I recently finished reading Trollope's "Can You Forgive Her?". It's the story of four women trying to figure out what was the best life for an intelligent spirited woman to live, and the answer Trollope gives (in the kindest possible way) is "To be forced to marry the man who can best use her and then bear him a son (or else be a retiring spinster or a vulgar old woman)." I'm still pretty depressed about it, because Trollope was so sure he was giving you the right answer, and it's charming of you to think any other answer could be correct but don't worry, you'll soon see that he was correct all along.
posted by acrasis at 6:42 PM on May 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Every fucking second someone spends rewatching The Matrix or Friends or rereading Harry Potter or reading yet another Danielle Steel novel is another second they're not watching or reading or listening to something new by someone new that they've never engaged with before!
We're allowed to do stuff that makes us happy or comforts us with its familiarity. Some people (me, for instance) reread Harry Potter a whole bunch but also try and read new books by new authors! It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
posted by leesh at 6:57 PM on May 10, 2019 [14 favorites]
We're allowed to do stuff that makes us happy or comforts us with its familiarity. Some people (me, for instance) reread Harry Potter a whole bunch but also try and read new books by new authors! It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
posted by leesh at 6:57 PM on May 10, 2019 [14 favorites]
Caduceus, what are you talking about? There are already far more books than anyone can read. It's not a zero sum game, because there is plenty of room for anyone to write and create, and plenty of room for anyone to partake of it. Not everyone likes everything, and some of us love rereading our favorite books and rewatching our favorite media now and then because we want something beloved and familiar. Engaging with something new is not always necessary, and not always comfortable.
posted by lhauser at 7:01 PM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by lhauser at 7:01 PM on May 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
I am a fan of Danielle Steel because she shares a name with someone I remember very fondly from high school. I need nothing more than that, but that she amassed a fortune and brought pleasure to millions of readers is a bonus.
posted by maxwelton at 7:16 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by maxwelton at 7:16 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I've been reading Steel's Wikipedia page, and holy shit, what a life! She's been married and divorced five times. I've been trying to figure out how one could write 20 or 21 hours a day the way she claims to, and still have time for well, anything else. It seems she was efficient in the matter of meeting and disposing of her husbands at least. Here's a snippet:
While still married to Lazard [her first husband, whom she married at 18], Steel met Danny Zugelder while interviewing an inmate in a prison near Lompoc, California, where Zugelder was also incarcerated. He moved in with Steel when he was paroled in June 1973, but returned to prison in early 1974 on robbery and rape charges. After receiving her divorce from Lazard in 1975, she married Zugelder in the prison canteen. She divorced him in 1978, but the relationship spawned Passion's Promise and Now and Forever, the two novels that launched her career.[9]
Steel married her third husband, William George Toth, the day after her divorce from Zugelder was finalized. She was already eight months pregnant with his child. With the success of her fourth book, The Promise, she became a participant in San Francisco high society while Toth, a former drug addict, was left out. They divorced in March 1981.
Also, I was wondering how old she was. She's 71. (And her birthday is the same day as mine.)
posted by orange swan at 7:29 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
While still married to Lazard [her first husband, whom she married at 18], Steel met Danny Zugelder while interviewing an inmate in a prison near Lompoc, California, where Zugelder was also incarcerated. He moved in with Steel when he was paroled in June 1973, but returned to prison in early 1974 on robbery and rape charges. After receiving her divorce from Lazard in 1975, she married Zugelder in the prison canteen. She divorced him in 1978, but the relationship spawned Passion's Promise and Now and Forever, the two novels that launched her career.[9]
Steel married her third husband, William George Toth, the day after her divorce from Zugelder was finalized. She was already eight months pregnant with his child. With the success of her fourth book, The Promise, she became a participant in San Francisco high society while Toth, a former drug addict, was left out. They divorced in March 1981.
Also, I was wondering how old she was. She's 71. (And her birthday is the same day as mine.)
posted by orange swan at 7:29 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Every fucking second someone spends rewatching The Matrix or Friends or rereading Harry Potter or reading yet another Danielle Steel novel is another second they're not watching or reading or listening to something new by someone new that they've never engaged with before! Saying art isn't a zero-sum game shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of time and mortality! FFS.
We talked about this in library school a lot. One of our professors was a big romance novel fan, and wrote articles about why public libraries should stock them. She had two main points, both of which I have since found to be correct.
1. Serious literature and pulp interpenetrate at every point. Great works of literature are written in response to pulp, and pulp in response to great literature. There are passages of serious literature that appeal to the base passions as cynically, crudely, and effectively as anything in pulp, and that literature is better for them. There are passages, and occasional whole novels, of pulp fiction in which it transcends itself, and, while remaining pulp, becomes sublime. Reading pulp is not only essential to understanding literature properly, it increases your chances of being a life-long reader. Serious literature is rational esteem and honorable commitment. Pulp is lust. You need both. Reading pulp does not dissipate the appetite for literature. It feeds and extends the appetite for literature.
2. The themes treated in serious literature are treated in pulp, but one at a time. Much of romance and historical romance writing, for instance, is fragments of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights taken apart and recombined in every possible variation and permutation. This is useful both as a way of understanding the originals and as a way of thinking about the themes. This means that even if one only reads pulp, one is not wasting one's time. One is taking one's literature in fragments. For this reason, it is better to read only pulp than to read nothing at all.
The reason that reading is not a zero-sum game, then, is that, although reading pulp takes time that could be spent reading literature, it develops, refines, and inflames desire for literature, strengthens one's capacity to appreciate literature, and deals with the same themes literature does in a simpler, more powerful, and more easily understood fashion.
posted by ckridge at 7:47 PM on May 10, 2019 [15 favorites]
We talked about this in library school a lot. One of our professors was a big romance novel fan, and wrote articles about why public libraries should stock them. She had two main points, both of which I have since found to be correct.
1. Serious literature and pulp interpenetrate at every point. Great works of literature are written in response to pulp, and pulp in response to great literature. There are passages of serious literature that appeal to the base passions as cynically, crudely, and effectively as anything in pulp, and that literature is better for them. There are passages, and occasional whole novels, of pulp fiction in which it transcends itself, and, while remaining pulp, becomes sublime. Reading pulp is not only essential to understanding literature properly, it increases your chances of being a life-long reader. Serious literature is rational esteem and honorable commitment. Pulp is lust. You need both. Reading pulp does not dissipate the appetite for literature. It feeds and extends the appetite for literature.
2. The themes treated in serious literature are treated in pulp, but one at a time. Much of romance and historical romance writing, for instance, is fragments of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights taken apart and recombined in every possible variation and permutation. This is useful both as a way of understanding the originals and as a way of thinking about the themes. This means that even if one only reads pulp, one is not wasting one's time. One is taking one's literature in fragments. For this reason, it is better to read only pulp than to read nothing at all.
The reason that reading is not a zero-sum game, then, is that, although reading pulp takes time that could be spent reading literature, it develops, refines, and inflames desire for literature, strengthens one's capacity to appreciate literature, and deals with the same themes literature does in a simpler, more powerful, and more easily understood fashion.
posted by ckridge at 7:47 PM on May 10, 2019 [15 favorites]
Metafilter: It is probably not necessary for people to jump into this thread to add their name to the list of people who find [insert cultural object here] beneath them.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:40 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Chrysostom at 8:40 PM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
The reason that reading is not a zero-sum game, then, is that, although reading pulp takes time that could be spent reading literature, it develops, refines, and inflames desire for literature, strengthens one's capacity to appreciate literature, and deals with the same themes literature does in a simpler, more powerful, and more easily understood fashion.
However one wants to define pulp and literature and without even making any assertion over whether the latter is better in whatever way it's defined, I don't see that statement as being particularly true in any meaningful sense. People tend to stick to the things they like and popular culture tends to show the things people like are largely similar to each other. It's true that anyone who finds pleasure in "literature" or some self defined "higher" form of artistic pleasure is also going to have read or seen a good deal of pulp, that's more because mass appeal works are always going to be far more numerous than refined appeal works and thus innately more common to experience.
That someone may find their path to whatever they consider higher art through the more common is almost unavoidable in that sense, but the desire comes as much from feeling a sense of interest yet dissatisfaction with common works that finds better reward in select works than it being a pathway most people follow as most like the common well enough to stay with it, which is why it's common. There's nothing at all wrong with that, not everyone is going to be drawn to more selective or refined works anymore than everyone is going to take up any other interest that could be found through common culture and then developed into a heightened form of appreciation. That isn't the same though as saying those things are all alike, more that the appreciation takes effort that only some will wish to provide for feeling an added sense of meaning involved.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:26 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
However one wants to define pulp and literature and without even making any assertion over whether the latter is better in whatever way it's defined, I don't see that statement as being particularly true in any meaningful sense. People tend to stick to the things they like and popular culture tends to show the things people like are largely similar to each other. It's true that anyone who finds pleasure in "literature" or some self defined "higher" form of artistic pleasure is also going to have read or seen a good deal of pulp, that's more because mass appeal works are always going to be far more numerous than refined appeal works and thus innately more common to experience.
That someone may find their path to whatever they consider higher art through the more common is almost unavoidable in that sense, but the desire comes as much from feeling a sense of interest yet dissatisfaction with common works that finds better reward in select works than it being a pathway most people follow as most like the common well enough to stay with it, which is why it's common. There's nothing at all wrong with that, not everyone is going to be drawn to more selective or refined works anymore than everyone is going to take up any other interest that could be found through common culture and then developed into a heightened form of appreciation. That isn't the same though as saying those things are all alike, more that the appreciation takes effort that only some will wish to provide for feeling an added sense of meaning involved.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:26 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Okay, can we put everything else aside for a moment and talk about that desk?
Before clicking into the photo, I was expecting a big ostentatious desk made out of something like cocobolo and ebony. But then, instead, the reality was so much more amazing.
posted by MillMan at 10:12 PM on May 10, 2019 [11 favorites]
Before clicking into the photo, I was expecting a big ostentatious desk made out of something like cocobolo and ebony. But then, instead, the reality was so much more amazing.
posted by MillMan at 10:12 PM on May 10, 2019 [11 favorites]
I did not know that, I'm sorry.
no, i didn't mean like how dARE you mention this, more like a warning that if you found his more recent stuff to be acceptable dumb airplane reading as i did, do NOT seek out the earlier stuff because it will make you hork.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:23 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
no, i didn't mean like how dARE you mention this, more like a warning that if you found his more recent stuff to be acceptable dumb airplane reading as i did, do NOT seek out the earlier stuff because it will make you hork.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:23 PM on May 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I've read bits of a few Danielle Steel books and they weren't for me. Debates about popular commercial fiction versus high art fiction, and about how society's rewards for different kinds of work are incoherent and irregular, are ubiquitous and I have nothing to add. But I do believe that we should all strive, to the extent we can, to give, express, "show forth" (whatever verb you want to use) what we have in us to give to the world. Because we have this one life, and this one chance.
Those who believe there is nothing more than this life and when we die we just go out like a snuffed candle, or are subsumed back into the ocean of eternal light, and those who believe that this life is a preparation for something greater and we gain in it the powers and virtues we will need in that higher state, can agree that this time is important and we should make of it what we can, "even as thou canst, even as it has been given thee." And Danielle Steel, to her credit, appears to be doing that.
posted by Seaweed Shark at 6:57 AM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
Those who believe there is nothing more than this life and when we die we just go out like a snuffed candle, or are subsumed back into the ocean of eternal light, and those who believe that this life is a preparation for something greater and we gain in it the powers and virtues we will need in that higher state, can agree that this time is important and we should make of it what we can, "even as thou canst, even as it has been given thee." And Danielle Steel, to her credit, appears to be doing that.
posted by Seaweed Shark at 6:57 AM on May 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
The desk. Whoa. Does she have covers to put over it? Her newest book is released, and -- BOOM! -- new spine on the desk? I'd do that.
Best romance novelist? Don't know, but I reread my Amanda Quick collection from time to time.
Can't say I own any of the books, although the one-sentence recaps noted above by clawsoon jogged some memories. Nothing that I care to go out and purchase at Half Price Books today.
Nine kids. Happy Mother's Day, D.S.!
posted by TrishaU at 8:18 AM on May 11, 2019
Best romance novelist? Don't know, but I reread my Amanda Quick collection from time to time.
Can't say I own any of the books, although the one-sentence recaps noted above by clawsoon jogged some memories. Nothing that I care to go out and purchase at Half Price Books today.
Nine kids. Happy Mother's Day, D.S.!
posted by TrishaU at 8:18 AM on May 11, 2019
I found a guide to Danielle Steel's novels: Every Danielle Steel Novel Summarized in 140 Characters or Less.
The author of that article is not using the word "summarized" as it is usually used. I think most people would refer to those as descriptions of the premise or setup.
posted by straight at 9:07 AM on May 11, 2019
The author of that article is not using the word "summarized" as it is usually used. I think most people would refer to those as descriptions of the premise or setup.
posted by straight at 9:07 AM on May 11, 2019
Oh fuck, I've read Passion's Promise, that was based off real life?!?! Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:33 AM on May 11, 2019
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:33 AM on May 11, 2019
She credits her boundless energy for her productivity and also her drive to push through moments when she's stuck. "I keep working. The more you shy away from the material, the worse it gets. You're better off pushing through and ending up with 30 dead pages you can correct later than just sitting there with nothing," she advises. Her output is also the result of a near superhuman ability to run on little sleep. "I don't get to bed until I'm so tired I could sleep on the floor. If I have four hours, it's really a good night for me," Steel says. She's always been like this, even as a kid growing up in France. Instead of playing with friends after school, she'd come home, immediately devour her homework, then set to work on her own stories. By 19, Steel had written her first book.She doesn't sleep.
Her books are her dreams — her waking dreams.
posted by jamjam at 10:21 AM on May 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
People tend to stick to the things they like and popular culture tends to show the things people like are largely similar to each other. It's true that anyone who finds pleasure in "literature" or some self defined "higher" form of artistic pleasure is also going to have read or seen a good deal of pulp, that's more because mass appeal works are always going to be far more numerous than refined appeal works and thus innately more common to experience.
Suppose that all major 19th-century novelists had clawed their way out of the grave shortly after death, shambled to their studies, and began to write, sleepless and unceasing, at the rate of Danielle Steel, so that their collective works now outnumbered all available pulp fiction. Even though they were more common, 19th-century novels would still not be the works that readers read first. Everyone would still start out on pulp, because pulp is easy and fun.
It is true that not everyone who starts out on pulp ever reads any serious literature. However, people who read a lot of pulp have typically read some serious literature, too. It is not that hard to sell a romance novel reader a paperback copy of Far From the Madding Crowd if you put a cover picture of a man and a woman embracing atop a haystack as lightning strikes nearby on it, and Hardy can take it from there.
My major point, though, as everyone who hangs around libraries will know, is that the person checking out several serious novels is quite likely to be checking out several pulp novels, too. It's not like people magically outgrow pulp as soon as they read a classic. A habitual reader will typically be continually searching for pulp that is not too formulaic and for literature that is not too arid and abstract. Most people read less and less the older they get, and, in my experience, the ones who stick with it read a mixture of pulp and literature, each taste feeding the other.
Thus, not a zero-sum game.
posted by ckridge at 10:55 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
Suppose that all major 19th-century novelists had clawed their way out of the grave shortly after death, shambled to their studies, and began to write, sleepless and unceasing, at the rate of Danielle Steel, so that their collective works now outnumbered all available pulp fiction. Even though they were more common, 19th-century novels would still not be the works that readers read first. Everyone would still start out on pulp, because pulp is easy and fun.
It is true that not everyone who starts out on pulp ever reads any serious literature. However, people who read a lot of pulp have typically read some serious literature, too. It is not that hard to sell a romance novel reader a paperback copy of Far From the Madding Crowd if you put a cover picture of a man and a woman embracing atop a haystack as lightning strikes nearby on it, and Hardy can take it from there.
My major point, though, as everyone who hangs around libraries will know, is that the person checking out several serious novels is quite likely to be checking out several pulp novels, too. It's not like people magically outgrow pulp as soon as they read a classic. A habitual reader will typically be continually searching for pulp that is not too formulaic and for literature that is not too arid and abstract. Most people read less and less the older they get, and, in my experience, the ones who stick with it read a mixture of pulp and literature, each taste feeding the other.
Thus, not a zero-sum game.
posted by ckridge at 10:55 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
Suppose that all major 19th-century novelists had clawed their way out of the grave shortly after death, shambled to their studies, and began to write, sleepless and unceasing, at the rate of Danielle Steel, so that their collective works now outnumbered all available pulp fiction
I just briefly imagined a world containing 179 Jane Austen novels and nearly cried. In a world with 179 Jane Austen novels, I expect I would not bother with any other fiction, ancient or modern or pulp or highbrow whatever, ever again.
posted by Aravis76 at 11:25 AM on May 11, 2019
I just briefly imagined a world containing 179 Jane Austen novels and nearly cried. In a world with 179 Jane Austen novels, I expect I would not bother with any other fiction, ancient or modern or pulp or highbrow whatever, ever again.
posted by Aravis76 at 11:25 AM on May 11, 2019
The problem is that Austen's eighth novel would not be at all likely to resemble her first seven, her twelfth surely would not, and her hundredth would be like nothing we can now imagine. The Steels of the world pump out consistent, reliable product. The Austens do not. She would try new things, and each time you picked up one of her novels you would have to figure out all over again what sort of book you were reading.
This is why one wants to read both pulp and serious literature. Sometimes one wants a soluble problem posed in a familiar form. Sometimes one wants to be dropped into a strange place among strangers and to explore.
posted by ckridge at 11:37 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is why one wants to read both pulp and serious literature. Sometimes one wants a soluble problem posed in a familiar form. Sometimes one wants to be dropped into a strange place among strangers and to explore.
posted by ckridge at 11:37 AM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think that presupposes that Austen isn’t good at the basic mechanics of emotionally satisfying storytelling and I don’t see why that should be. It’s true that she grapples intelligently with moral problems, has a killer prose style, and can create enormously persuasive and complex characters; it doesn’t follow that she can’t spin a gripping yarn with a satisfying pay-off with the same skill as Danielle Steel.
In general, I don’t think I buy this bifurcation between highbrow 19thc writers who are hard work and pulp writers who are pleasurable to read. Dickens is the consummate people-pleasing storyteller and melodramatist; Austen is brilliant at compelling readers to emotionally connect with her characters and their vicissitudes and to cheer a happy ending; even Trollope has a trick or two up his sleeve when it comes to making readers sigh or cry or feel like they got what they came for. All these writers, in my opinion, can do more than Danielle Steel can—it doesn’t follow that they are also incapable of doing what she does well. If Austen had lived to finish The Watsons, I’m certain it would have been just as emotionally satisfying and rereadable as Pride and Prejudice; it may even have been better, who can know.
posted by Aravis76 at 1:30 PM on May 11, 2019
In general, I don’t think I buy this bifurcation between highbrow 19thc writers who are hard work and pulp writers who are pleasurable to read. Dickens is the consummate people-pleasing storyteller and melodramatist; Austen is brilliant at compelling readers to emotionally connect with her characters and their vicissitudes and to cheer a happy ending; even Trollope has a trick or two up his sleeve when it comes to making readers sigh or cry or feel like they got what they came for. All these writers, in my opinion, can do more than Danielle Steel can—it doesn’t follow that they are also incapable of doing what she does well. If Austen had lived to finish The Watsons, I’m certain it would have been just as emotionally satisfying and rereadable as Pride and Prejudice; it may even have been better, who can know.
posted by Aravis76 at 1:30 PM on May 11, 2019
Compare Austen and Eliot. Austen dies at 42; Eliot at 61. Given that extra 20 years, Eliot writes Middlemarch, a much more ambitious, much more demanding novel than anything written previously. All of her story-telling skills are in place, but this is a much colder, harder, and more complicated story. It is climbing a beautiful mountain, not a scenic drive. Eliot also uses that extra time to write one of the very first non-anti-Semitic English novels about Jews, and stumbles, because she is bumping right up against what it is possible for someone of her background to do well.
The serious ones push the edges hard, and that means that they eventually wind up working you hard. Thus, pulp, for recuperative play.
posted by ckridge at 2:26 PM on May 11, 2019
The serious ones push the edges hard, and that means that they eventually wind up working you hard. Thus, pulp, for recuperative play.
posted by ckridge at 2:26 PM on May 11, 2019
stance to be inappropriately condescending and overbearing
Dude, you barged into a thread about Danielle Steele explicitly to shit on Danielle Steele and anyone who enjoys her work because she, in your view, has no objective merit.
You can dress it up however you want — and people often do — but what this comes down to is that you want to sneer at people for enjoying something you don’t. You want them to know you’re better than them because of what you like and what they like. Your very first comments in this thread were full of aggressive condescension.
Participate in whatever conversations you want, but I’m not gonna be gaslighted.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:36 PM on May 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
Dude, you barged into a thread about Danielle Steele explicitly to shit on Danielle Steele and anyone who enjoys her work because she, in your view, has no objective merit.
You can dress it up however you want — and people often do — but what this comes down to is that you want to sneer at people for enjoying something you don’t. You want them to know you’re better than them because of what you like and what they like. Your very first comments in this thread were full of aggressive condescension.
Participate in whatever conversations you want, but I’m not gonna be gaslighted.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:36 PM on May 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
My fave romance novels:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Broken Wings by L-J Baker
How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
Red Adam's Lady by Grace Ingram
Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones
The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee
Very Far Away from Anywhere Else by Ursula K. Le Guin
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Strong Poison / Have His Carcass / Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
Bellwether by Connie Willis
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Romance is great.
posted by kyrademon at 5:03 PM on May 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Broken Wings by L-J Baker
How to Make a Wish by Ashley Herring Blake
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
Red Adam's Lady by Grace Ingram
Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones
The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee
Very Far Away from Anywhere Else by Ursula K. Le Guin
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Strong Poison / Have His Carcass / Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
Bellwether by Connie Willis
Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson
Romance is great.
posted by kyrademon at 5:03 PM on May 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
Ooh. Those of those I know, I like very much. That is a useful list.
I would add Collette's Gigi, and an obscure ghost story called Tryst, by someone claiming to be named Elswyth Thane. I read that one in haste and shame at 16, having lifted it off a girl's shelf trying to figure out what sort of guy she might love, and about a quarter of the way through realized it was really good.
posted by ckridge at 5:55 PM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
I would add Collette's Gigi, and an obscure ghost story called Tryst, by someone claiming to be named Elswyth Thane. I read that one in haste and shame at 16, having lifted it off a girl's shelf trying to figure out what sort of guy she might love, and about a quarter of the way through realized it was really good.
posted by ckridge at 5:55 PM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
My major point, though, as everyone who hangs around libraries will know, is that the person checking out several serious novels is quite likely to be checking out several pulp novels, too. It's not like people magically outgrow pulp as soon as they read a classic. A habitual reader will typically be continually searching for pulp that is not too formulaic and for literature that is not too arid and abstract. Most people read less and less the older they get, and, in my experience, the ones who stick with it read a mixture of pulp and literature, each taste feeding the other.
Thus, not a zero-sum game.
I'd say it is sorta a zero sum game for any individual in the way mentioned earlier, everything we choose to do is taking time from something else and as our time is necessarily limited choices are always about one thing instead of another. But, really, that's irrelevant since virtually no one can always act out of the idea of doing "the best possible" thing in every waking moment, however they might define it. We do what we feel like doing or feel we must do and don't focus on how all the decisions we make add up, save in moments of self questioning later in life perhaps.
Given that, objection was less about how choosing Danielle Steel somehow might rob a person from reading Jane Austen, but how the choice of Danielle Steel has little to do with Jane Austen as a gateway or anything else. People choose Steel because they want to read her books, they choose Austen when they want to read Austen. If they aren't familiar with one or the other they may certainly find them through some loose idea of genre and then decide whether they want to read more or not, but there isn't really a gateway as such. People who like Austen may also like to read Steel, but that doesn't necessarily go both ways or even hold as especially true as a rule though certainly can as still a reasonable subset of some larger whole.
I just don't think the idea that a Steel reader, if even exposed to Austen, is then going to suddenly realize what they were missing and find Austen preferable or possibly even enjoyable. People read or watch things for their own reasons that don't automatically translate between works even of the same genre. Reading Austen as if it was Steel also isn't quite the same thing even if it is still enjoyed. The reason Austen is celebrated isn't just tied to "liking" but to certain ideas or values around writing that have been looked at in painstaking detail over the many decades.
There's nothing exactly wrong with liking Austen or Steel for whatever reason any one person may, but there is still something more to it than just fitting one's taste in the moment that places Austen as a significant artist in a way that Steel hasn't been within the culture. Talking about objectivity and subjectivity too sort of misses the point in that same regard. But, as I say, I don't have any strong objection to the zero-sum argument so I'm cool leaving it at that.
posted by gusottertrout at 6:38 PM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
Thus, not a zero-sum game.
I'd say it is sorta a zero sum game for any individual in the way mentioned earlier, everything we choose to do is taking time from something else and as our time is necessarily limited choices are always about one thing instead of another. But, really, that's irrelevant since virtually no one can always act out of the idea of doing "the best possible" thing in every waking moment, however they might define it. We do what we feel like doing or feel we must do and don't focus on how all the decisions we make add up, save in moments of self questioning later in life perhaps.
Given that, objection was less about how choosing Danielle Steel somehow might rob a person from reading Jane Austen, but how the choice of Danielle Steel has little to do with Jane Austen as a gateway or anything else. People choose Steel because they want to read her books, they choose Austen when they want to read Austen. If they aren't familiar with one or the other they may certainly find them through some loose idea of genre and then decide whether they want to read more or not, but there isn't really a gateway as such. People who like Austen may also like to read Steel, but that doesn't necessarily go both ways or even hold as especially true as a rule though certainly can as still a reasonable subset of some larger whole.
I just don't think the idea that a Steel reader, if even exposed to Austen, is then going to suddenly realize what they were missing and find Austen preferable or possibly even enjoyable. People read or watch things for their own reasons that don't automatically translate between works even of the same genre. Reading Austen as if it was Steel also isn't quite the same thing even if it is still enjoyed. The reason Austen is celebrated isn't just tied to "liking" but to certain ideas or values around writing that have been looked at in painstaking detail over the many decades.
There's nothing exactly wrong with liking Austen or Steel for whatever reason any one person may, but there is still something more to it than just fitting one's taste in the moment that places Austen as a significant artist in a way that Steel hasn't been within the culture. Talking about objectivity and subjectivity too sort of misses the point in that same regard. But, as I say, I don't have any strong objection to the zero-sum argument so I'm cool leaving it at that.
posted by gusottertrout at 6:38 PM on May 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
> "... and an obscure ghost story called Tryst"
Wow, I looked over some reviews, and Tryst sounds great!
... and I can get a copy for as cheap as $60.84 including shipping. Oh, well.
posted by kyrademon at 2:32 AM on May 12, 2019
Wow, I looked over some reviews, and Tryst sounds great!
... and I can get a copy for as cheap as $60.84 including shipping. Oh, well.
posted by kyrademon at 2:32 AM on May 12, 2019
I picked up one of those print-on-demand copies for a reasonable price a few years back. (And wound up giving it to that same girl, with whom I am still friends, come to think of it.) Maybe that will come back around again.
Of that list you gave above, which is your favorite?
posted by ckridge at 5:58 AM on May 12, 2019
Of that list you gave above, which is your favorite?
posted by ckridge at 5:58 AM on May 12, 2019
> "I picked up one of those print-on-demand copies for a reasonable price a few years back."
Is there a specific website you used for that? I can't figure it out. :/
> "Of that list you gave above, which is your favorite?"
Oh god. Um ...
Written On The Body.
posted by kyrademon at 10:03 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
Is there a specific website you used for that? I can't figure it out. :/
> "Of that list you gave above, which is your favorite?"
Oh god. Um ...
Written On The Body.
posted by kyrademon at 10:03 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
For those who want to read about Steele, rather than her work, I highly recommend the novel Angel, about a narcissistic Edwardian romance novelist. I could have sworn it was based on Danielle Steele, right down to the larger-than-life full size portrait with jewels, and a refusal to read others’ work. Of course, Elizabeth Taylor published Angel in 1957, predating Steele’s career, which is hard to believe, given the uncanny similarities.
posted by Atrahasis at 11:24 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Atrahasis at 11:24 AM on May 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
Dude, you barged into a thread about Danielle Steele explicitly to shit on Danielle Steele and anyone who enjoys her work because she, in your view, has no objective merit.
You can dress it up however you want — and people often do — but what this comes down to is that you want to sneer at people for enjoying something you don’t. You want them to know you’re better than them because of what you like and what they like. Your very first comments in this thread were full of aggressive condescension.
Participate in whatever conversations you want, but I’m not gonna be gaslighted.
I was/am critical of Danielle Steel's novels and I'd be interested to know what Steel's unvarnished opinion of the calibre of her own work is, yes, but I have not said one word in this thread about those who enjoy her work. You're equating judging a work with judging those who consume that work, and those are not the same two things at all. You're further claiming that my criticism of Steel is based on a desire to "sneer at people" or "wanting them to know I'm better than them" if they like Steel's work, and you're quite mistaken in that too. I don't care to discuss anything with anyone who bases her "arguments" on offensively presumptuous and baseless remarks about what I think/am motivated by, what my level of knowledge of a given topic is, or what my professional experience has been.
posted by orange swan at 1:36 PM on May 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
You can dress it up however you want — and people often do — but what this comes down to is that you want to sneer at people for enjoying something you don’t. You want them to know you’re better than them because of what you like and what they like. Your very first comments in this thread were full of aggressive condescension.
Participate in whatever conversations you want, but I’m not gonna be gaslighted.
I was/am critical of Danielle Steel's novels and I'd be interested to know what Steel's unvarnished opinion of the calibre of her own work is, yes, but I have not said one word in this thread about those who enjoy her work. You're equating judging a work with judging those who consume that work, and those are not the same two things at all. You're further claiming that my criticism of Steel is based on a desire to "sneer at people" or "wanting them to know I'm better than them" if they like Steel's work, and you're quite mistaken in that too. I don't care to discuss anything with anyone who bases her "arguments" on offensively presumptuous and baseless remarks about what I think/am motivated by, what my level of knowledge of a given topic is, or what my professional experience has been.
posted by orange swan at 1:36 PM on May 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
Okay, mad respect to the desk, but of the 179 books, did she have to go with one called "DADDY" when she was picking the books for the desk? The only upside to that as a name for a romance novel is that I am incapable of pronouncing it in any other voice but Rue McClanahan's.
posted by zeusianfog at 2:40 PM on May 13, 2019
posted by zeusianfog at 2:40 PM on May 13, 2019
I read about ten of her novels before I burnt out. Her historical fiction is worth reading (Wanderlust, The Ring, Thurston House), but skip all of the "rich people are sad" stories.
posted by soelo at 12:06 PM on May 15, 2019
posted by soelo at 12:06 PM on May 15, 2019
I am a sucker for those “habits of famous writers” articles and quite frankly I need more information about the working habits of Ms Steele beyond her daily toast and iced decaf. Clearly the desk is part of her daily inspiration!
posted by mostly vowels at 7:17 PM on May 15, 2019
posted by mostly vowels at 7:17 PM on May 15, 2019
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posted by ckridge at 10:00 AM on May 10, 2019 [5 favorites]