When I was 14 years old, my family visited the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Decades later, I remember several of the masterpieces hanging on the walls, particularly one that I did not like and could not determine why it was considered worthy of display in the renowned museum. It was a painting, a huge canvas painted in institutional green (the same color as mint flavored Crest toothpaste and the same color as used on the school’s painted cinder block walls). Facing it, there were two stripes toward the right end. One was thick and black, and the other was thinner and red.
I didn’t know what it signified and could not have said why it was considered “great art” when my pencil drawings were considered childish trash. I still don’t know what constitutes “great art” when I see paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other works that, to me, appear to have been thrown together by your average kindergarten-aged child. What makes those works so spectacular? Why are they worthy of museums and galleries, but my drawings and paintings are not?
This puzzlement was brought home to me recently after editing an article about an internationally renowned artist’s gallery exhibition in Napa Valley. Art critics say his leporine paintings are filled with whimsy and wonder. To me, they look like finger paintings done by a five-year-old child. I don’t understand the admiration lavished on them or the high price tags they command.
I could whine, “Why are his paintings celebrated and mine aren’t?” But that just reeks of envy and sour grapes. I’m a mediocre painter and know it: my paintings don’t reach my expectation for the term “masterpiece.” (Yes, the image accompanying this post is one of my paintings.)
The world of literature functions much the same way. There are classes or hierarchies of worth. Literary “experts” declare a particular work astounding, magnificent—a masterpiece. This tends to happen with literary fiction, but almost never with genre fiction. And heaven forbid an author write romance. That genre carries an enduring stigma earning disapproval and expressions of distaste. Genre fiction, it’s implied, is never as “good” or “worthy” as literary fiction.
Of course, literary worth and commercial success do not go hand in hand. Romance, that genre despised by so many, is the most commercially successful genre ($1.44 billion in sales revenue). Fantasy and science fiction (lumped together) is a distant second at $590 million. Fiction or nonfiction, romance beats them all in terms of volume (the number of book titles) and book sales.
Romance serves as an umbrella for myriad sub-genres, effectively subsuming other genres into the genre and focusing a story’s plot on the romance. Especially popular right now is “romantasy” which is a genre-crossing combination of romance and fantasy. A Court of Thorns and Roses is a popular “romantasy” series. I wrote my own series in that same sub-genre: the Twin Moons Saga. Science fiction is another example of the easy tie-in with romance. As I tell prospective customers, if Captain Kirk could have a romance on almost every planet the Enterprise visited (Star Trek reference here), then a human woman can most certainly have a romance with an alien. And, yes, I have a science fiction romance series: the Triune Allience Brides.
Romance, I tell the naysayers, is present in every genre. Sure, your ideal of a literary masterpiece might be none other than something penned by the Bard (William Shakespeare), but look at the romantic plots and subplots running through so many of his plays. Look at popular movies in other genres, such as Die Hard, a thriller. The subplot focuses on the reigniting of the romance between the protagonist and his wife.
I don’t imagine that sneering dismissal. I’ve been to enough events where I sell my books to see the sidelong looks at my book covers. It’s become almost funny when someone pauses by my table and I ask her what she likes to read, only to watch that person quickly scan the book covers and try to come up with a genre that’s not on the table. That genre is usually mystery, so I direct them to the book that I consider “romantic suspense, if you like a bit of mystery. It’s my best seller.” They’re usually pleasantly surprised and intrigued by the back cover blurb.
I’ve even been told by others to whom I’m not trying to sell my books that they never read romance because it’s just pornography without pictures. There’s no changing their minds, so I don’t engage in an exercise of futility.
Of course, what’s commercially successful may also be terrible in terms of craftsmanship. I can name a few books that I consider awful in terms of their creators’ skill, just as I view the work of some artists whose skill I deem is lacking in the technical proficiency necessary to considered them worth my admiration. However, being an adult with a mature perspective (one hopes), I also know that my not-so-humble opinion isn’t the determining factor for excellence, much less what constitutes a masterpiece.
Like beauty, worth is in the eye of the beholder.
