"But it's not Moby Dick!" -- such is the heralding cry of most romance-novel critics.
But fans of the often-belittled genre countered last night that critics know little about the genre's substance and even less about its unique beauty.
Isabel Swift, the editorial vice president at Harlequin Enterprises, a massive publisher in the romance novel industry, fields that kind of criticism daily. Still, she maintains a strong stance regarding the redeeming qualities of the books she helps bring to the audience at large.
Swift was introduced to a room full of romance novel fans, critics and people just trying to get out of the rain yesterday as part of the Penn Humanities Forum lecture series.
Forum Director Wendy Steiner championed the romance novel as she introduced Swift.
"Amnesia, cowboys, babies, secret babies -- these are hot topics for romance audiences this year," Steiner said. "Who would admit to being among them? Isabel Swift, a world-traveled, Radcliffe-educated professional does!"
Swift began the forum with the definition of romance novel: "A fiction novel where a relationship is developed between two people usually in the form of a meeting, attraction, barrier, destruction of that barrier and a declaration."
Swift went on to briefly discuss the history of romance novels from as early as the fourth century. Since then, they have permeated almost every genre from suspense to gothic and humor.
"Romance novels explore how the sum of a whole can be greater than its parts," she said. "There is an incredible warmth in this industry. Authors meet each other at conferences, and the sharing and support that goes on within this genre is remarkable despite the obvious competition that exists."
Swift took the defensive when someone in the audience countered that there was little substance to romance novels, and that people took them too seriously.
"No one says romance novels are a how-to for life," she countered, "but they are a celebration of life and its possibilities.You have to be optimistic as a writer because you can't write a romance that you do not believe -- to me, I always look at the glass as half full in romance."
Many people in the audience shared the same approach. Brianna Wills, who works at the Nursing School excitedly proclaimed, "I was never a reader until I picked up romance novels -- it's a family thing." Wills was even named after a character in one of her mother's favorite romance novels.
However, not everyone in the audience was drawn to the forum by their love for the industry. Jim Gladstone, a 1988 Penn graduate, is a mainstream literary novelist who said that he was fascinated by the velocity at which romance novelists write. He argued that "there is a degree of calculation to it that is not being owned up to," and came to the forum to find out.
Whatever the case, the fact remains that Harlequin's books have been translated into 25 different languages and sold in 100 countries around the world, and that the industry pulled in $1.5 billion last year.
"Clearly," Swift said after announcing the impressive figures, "romance is a universal language."
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