I'm going to be reviewing a fantastic vintage (1983) romance very soon: Lightning That Lingers by Laura London (aka Tom and Sharon Curtis) but I'm just letting that particular book 'settle' in my mind before I tackle the review. However, with that book in mind and with a nod to my last post about the Angelique books, I thought I'd do a brief post about vintage romance.
Vintage romance - for me - is romance written in the relatively recent past. For present purposes, I'd classify that as from about the early 90s back to about the 50s/60s. Anything earlier than that is getting into classics territory (though 'forgotten' pulp fiction might also qualify) - we're not talking Pride & Prejudice here. Not even Georgette Heyer.
What fascinates about vintage romance is that you read the 'timeless' romance trope through a different lens. It's easy to read a 19th century writer and get that difference. When you read something written 15, 25 or 35 years ago, it's much more subtle and often instructive about the time it was written in, particularly regarding sexual and gender-related attitudes. A further 'layer' on the lens might be the age of the author at the time of writing e.g. a 50 year old author writing in the 1970s might more accurately represent the general mores of the 1950s. When you get a 50 year old author writing in the 1970s about the 1820s, you get quite an interesting mix.
Some might say that the lens shouldn't be there because 'good' writing is timeless. I don't buy that. Author world-view/ outlook inevitably creeps in. Whatever the POV situation with the characters, that author lens is there in some form, an almost invisible thing that is nevertheless present, like a ghost. I think that is particularly so with a romance in which sympathy for the characters is vital - that means representing those characters in a way that will meet (ultimately) with reader approval. (Which presumably is why so many 'modern' Regency heroes have an intimate appreciation of the finer points of cunnilingus).
It's fascinating to read old romance novels and notice what has changed and what has stayed the same. Many of the elements we bloggers report enjoying are little altered. Tortured alpha heroes with an inability to communicate are endlessly popular. But those heroes are now unlikely to visit casual violence - slaps, spankings and general physical brutality - upon the heroines. In short, the basic ingredients are still the same but perhaps the quantities and cooking time have changed a little.
Lightning That Lingers was particularly interesting to me in that it has both a modern and a dated feel to it. The heroine feels like she's from the 1950s but the male-stripper hero doesn't recognise the sort of sexual mores that belong in a romance novel from the early 1980s. He just falls for her, wants her and decides to set her free from her inhibitions. In this scene, he's just asked her to spend the night with him:
"It doesn't matter," he said in a kind tone, "there are other ways to do these things. For example, we could date. If you think that would be reassuring."
....."Date?"
"Date. That phenomenon of human group behaviour where you devote a goodly amount of time to wondering what to wear and fixing your hair and I empty the McDonald's cartions out of my car and we both make sure we've had showers and sprayed ourselves with all the appropriate chemicals that the advertising industry assures us we can't do without...."
This monologue goes on for another page, by the end of which you're totally with Philip: dating is ludicrous.
Do you read vintage romance? Do you make allowances for the time at which the book was written? How do you feel about vintage romance that seems to espouse a set of mores or attitudes that don't meet your own world-view?
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13 comments:
I love Philip. So tender, sweet and hot. sigh...
Yeah, I'll read vintage if the right book catches my attention. This one sounds good, actually :)
To me, the author lens (I like that term) is much more obvious in vintage than with actual old stuff. The slaps and spankings, the dismissal of her point of view, the expectations of sex (or no sex) in the face of strong physical attraction, unexpected pregnancy... the way we write about it now has changed so much in the past 50 years sometimes it's like they were writing about aliens.
Stuff from 10 - 20 years ago is vaguely uncomfortable in how the author has written to an expectations that I, the modern reader, no longer have. Stuff from 25 years ago or longer is often moderately ludicrous, it's like a carnival mirror with everything distorted.
Heck, I might pick one of my old keepers off the shelf tonight and see what I used to think was amazing.
Vintage romance -- great title for the recent past novels. I was thinking modern as in more modern than historical and less up to date than contemporary... :)
Great post.
Occasionally I worry how my writing is going to hold up, before I make myself stop, because there's nothing I can do about it.
It's especially interesting to me to read "vintage" romance as I grow older. Reading a 1970s book in the 1980s is a very different thing from reading it again today. I always notice something different, something I didn't notice at the time because it was in the air.
Well, I crtainly acquire them -- there are so many so cheap all around me (used supermarket table, used book store, etc) -- but I read them much more rarely.
And I just ordered that Curtis category you mentioned.
Sometimes when reading vintage romance, I cannot wrap my mind around the mores of the time -- especially if the hero is too brutal and beastlike or the heroine is too much the wimpette or doormat.
Give me an OOP Signet Regency any time! That being said, like Jessica, I still grab them all the time ... and I just ordered the Curtis book. You sure you're not a secret employee of an online UBS store? Seems to me I've bought more books after visiting you!!
I love reading "vintage" romances and making the inevitable comparisons.
I always try to make allowances when I do read them. It's fascinating how things change and how styles that are acceptable or very popular today, can (or will) become totally unacceptable tomorrow.
Of course, it's always lovely to find that one "vintage" book that stands the test of time. :) Lovely post.
There are some vintage books that I have trouble with such as the "love at first rape" historicals from the 70s that I've come across in used bookstores. However, I do have something of a soft spot for some of the old category romances. I don't read them often, but every now and then I like dipping into some of the 1950s-70s doctor-nurse books or gothic romance tales. I own way too many gothics! The different gender role expectations of the time sometimes pull me out of the story, but mostly I enjoy reading these blasts from the past.
Speaking of vintage romance, blogger Magdalen pointed me to this blog about Betty Neels that is a hilarious homage to her vintage romances. Here is the link:
http://www.everyneelsthing.blogspot.com
Well, Lynn Spencer did a great job of outing me as a reader of "vintage" romances -- although, as I read them all when they were first published, that makes me "vintage" as well. (I choose to take that as a compliment.)
Here's what I learned this week and had never thought about before. Betty Neels books, perhaps uniquely among old Mills & Boons romances, was anachronistic even when she wrote them. But she was born in 1910 and didn't start publishing until she was pushing 60. (Nonetheless, she wrote over 130 books -- gives me hope, that does.)
So you can read her books about English nurses marrying Dutch doctors and think how regressive the sexual politics are, but imagine that instead of being 1969, it's 1939 -- around the time that Betty was herself a trained nurse making a living for herself (and family, presumably). Now she's a professional at a time when women weren't expected to work outside the home -- that's a more progressive heroine.
The lens applies to readers as well as authors. Consider the situation for an elderly (70s or 80s) reader viewing with bemusement the bizarre and ludicrous behavior of a contemporary couple.
@Magdalen - I did not know that about Betty Neels! I had read several of her books and knew she herself had married a Dutch doctor, but that was about it. She wrote so many books and Harlequin's promo pieces make her sound as though she's been around forever. I think I just assumed she had been writing for eons rather like Barbara Cartland did. Interesting that she accomplished so much in a fairly limited timespan!
Love vintage categories precisely because of the author's lens. It's a mini historical lesson. I think it helps us appreciate (and sometimes question) changes we've made in attitudes and morals.
What, you don't think Colonel Angus was popular with selfish Regency rakes? :O
I don't think the Betty Neels world *ever* existed! Her books have an Alice in Wonderland setting with clearly defined internal rules that don't necessarily correspond to any specific moment in history. That's a large part of their fascination for me, anyway: she was a master world-builder without half the world-building trappings that are so common in science fiction and fantasy. She would very clearly lay out her fictional world's social mores and rules for that world's particular style of "emotional justice", then demonstrate those principles in the story's resolution.
Back to your main point--I have a very limited tolerance for "vintage", and I suspect it's because of my own reading path through the genre. E.g. I never read the older "bodice ripper" historical romances, and I have zero nostalgia for them. In recent years I've tried a few, but I've never made it through one. In category romance, there are a couple of types of '70s-80s stories that I read years ago and still have some tolerance for, but that's about it. Mary Stewart, on the other hand, suits me just perfectly. Go figya.
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