I'm impressed that you took the topic seriously and provided a broader context in a respectful and objective way.
While I could never read the books (they really are badly written), or see the films (so cheesy, and good actors gone bad), your essay provided insights about reading books, especially the formulaic, the emotional heft for cohorts of readers, that were genuinely interesting.
I now have a better appreciation for why certain genres remain money spinners in the book industry.
This essay seems right, if a bit academic in style. You should do a more wide-ranging follow up that looks at more than one plot. How do reconcile independence and dependence, submission and self-respect, etc? It is believable that romance novels function this way. So do action movies. A man is good at violence, but what about justice? Will his violence be just? The fantasy of the action hero reconciles violence and justice. Anyway, this is nothing world-shaking, but art, especially near its "genre" core, does seem to help us evade, for a while, the contradictions that bedevil us. I'd love to hear more.
I enjoyed reading this but I'm going to be a bit of a stick-in-the-mud here about terminology.
I haven't read the book in question but it strikes me that the analysis being explicated here is less sociology than literary criticism. An actual sociological analysis would have offered us at least a portrait of the book's many readers and what they felt about it rather than just an analysis of its themes (it is imputed that readers feel this but never shown by actually talking to a single reader); it would also have offered us a more step-by-step account of how the book (which from what I know began in Twilight fan communities) made the transition to more readers because after all, there are many other books, especially in the romance genre, that do offer a "cognitive and emotional challenge" to the reader because they bring forth what one might call human contradictions; any of those books could, in theory, have been breakout hits so what precise circumstances made this one the breakout?
That's what I would call "sociology"; what I see here is an interesting analysis of the book's themes but not an explanation of its success.
I'm impressed that you took the topic seriously and provided a broader context in a respectful and objective way.
While I could never read the books (they really are badly written), or see the films (so cheesy, and good actors gone bad), your essay provided insights about reading books, especially the formulaic, the emotional heft for cohorts of readers, that were genuinely interesting.
I now have a better appreciation for why certain genres remain money spinners in the book industry.
This essay seems right, if a bit academic in style. You should do a more wide-ranging follow up that looks at more than one plot. How do reconcile independence and dependence, submission and self-respect, etc? It is believable that romance novels function this way. So do action movies. A man is good at violence, but what about justice? Will his violence be just? The fantasy of the action hero reconciles violence and justice. Anyway, this is nothing world-shaking, but art, especially near its "genre" core, does seem to help us evade, for a while, the contradictions that bedevil us. I'd love to hear more.
"rich Corinthian leather" -- I laughed out loud. Great essay. Best line, for the right reader, "
I’m glad someone caught that
I enjoyed reading this but I'm going to be a bit of a stick-in-the-mud here about terminology.
I haven't read the book in question but it strikes me that the analysis being explicated here is less sociology than literary criticism. An actual sociological analysis would have offered us at least a portrait of the book's many readers and what they felt about it rather than just an analysis of its themes (it is imputed that readers feel this but never shown by actually talking to a single reader); it would also have offered us a more step-by-step account of how the book (which from what I know began in Twilight fan communities) made the transition to more readers because after all, there are many other books, especially in the romance genre, that do offer a "cognitive and emotional challenge" to the reader because they bring forth what one might call human contradictions; any of those books could, in theory, have been breakout hits so what precise circumstances made this one the breakout?
That's what I would call "sociology"; what I see here is an interesting analysis of the book's themes but not an explanation of its success.
Maybe reread the first three paragraphs, or read the cited sociological book?
The 150 million plus readers, in 52 languages, are predominately women, over the age of 35, with decent incomes.