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This drives me absolutely, bat-shit crazy.
There are so many unkind, false, and problematic things about that approach toward fiction--and toward life, and other people--that I want to stand up on my soapbox for a moment and explain why I think "fluff" belongs in a literary diet right alongside the beans and Brussels sprouts. I won't presume to speak for the world; plenty of people have plenty of differing reasons for reading what they do, most of which boil down to "it's what I like." I will, however, speak toward the characteristics I possess that seem to make people think I shouldn't read "fluff", and which I think are the very same reasons why I must.
Before addressing these characteristics, there is the question of what, exactly, constitutes "fluff": is it truly a literary piece without substance, or is it just a derogatory nickname for something that doesn't grapple with Nobel prize-winning issues? As far as I can tell, depending on who is awarding the name, a piece may qualify as fluff if it includes any or all of the following:
- a happy ending
- characters who have lived relatively average lives, free of abuse, rape, torture, getting shot, scientific experimentation, etc.
- a romance as its central plot line
- a central conflict which lacks sufficient angst or drama to please the reader
- not enough explicit, on-page sex to qualify as erotica
I'm sure there are other qualifiers missing from this list, but these are a few that immediately stand out to me. What I don't understand is why these qualities automatically make for less nutritive reading than their "substantive" counterparts, and why these stories should be treated with such disdain. (ETA: this post was not actually inspired by the usual "literary fiction hates genre fiction" argument, but by a few reviews of m/m works by m/m authors and readers. Just so we're clear as to where i'm seeing the disdain.) Perhaps it is simply that these things are ordinary, everyday things that surround us everywhere we look, and so they seem too common to be the topic of a good story, too obvious to teach a lesson, too easy to provide a struggle worth the reader's investment, too universal to build empathy. Personally, I think that is exactly why we need these kinds of stories: they are examples of real life when it turns out well, and that's something we all need to understand deep in that place where we store the lessons we learn from reading.
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A. I am happily married.
This one comes from an unspoken assumption that reading romance is a search for something we're not getting from our own real lives. That's why it's perhaps just a teeny bit okay for a single woman to read romance, or for a dissatisfied, middle-aged housewife who's been stuck at home with the kids for the last fifteen years and feels frumpy and fat and unsexy all the time. But for a thirty-one-year-old married woman who's still relatively attractive and still very much in love with her husband? The interest is baffling. The other half of this objection is the assumption that there is something akin to emotional or sexual infidelity in reading about another couple's romance, particularly if there's explicit sex involved. Therefore, I must be looking for something I'm not getting from my own marriage. Worse, I'm actively harming my marriage by reading it.
This assumption makes me sad. First, it means I'm hesitant to tell people what I read and write because of what it may cause them to think about the state of my marriage and/or my own commitment to it. Second, it reinforces the idea that it is always better to be in a relationship than not, because it implies that real life romance is better than fictional romance is better than singlehood. Third, I think this reveals a deep insecurity about trust within committed relationships. Why doesn't anyone worry about a married woman reading about the terrible, disintegrating marriages in much of modern fiction? Because no sane woman wants to leave her own marriage for one that's worse. Why do people worry about a married woman reading about happy, successful relationships? Because there's nothing crazy about wanting a marriage better than the one she already has. The sad part is assuming that wanting a better marriage is going to lead to infidelity or divorce instead of improving the relationship she already has.
Why do I think the happily married woman not only may, but in fact should, read fluff? Because I think she is exactly the kind of woman who is going to see in it reminders of her own marriage's success that will strengthen her commitment, and she is going to see faults she or her partner has and be looking for the solutions to them rather than ways to escape. I think people's fear of what reading romance does to a marriage comes from what reading romance can do to a woman who is looking for something she's not getting: she wants the romance, the spark, the whatever she's lost, and becomes more convinced her marriage is a mistake; she sees Hero/Heroine X and wonders why her husband can't be more like him, and she resents him a little more; she remembers the days of being Hero/Heroine Y and feels nostalgic for the days when she was wanted and pursued, and thinks about how she can get back there again. There is definitely danger in that. But the benefit of fluff for the married reader is when she sees the romance, the spark, the whatever she's lost and remembers how it felt, why it was there, what it was like, and remembers why she fell in love with her spouse; she sees Hero/Heroine X and sees her spouse somewhere in him, and she falls in love with him a little bit more all over again; she remembers the days of being Heroine Y and yes, remembers the thrill of being wanted and pursued, but also remembers all of the obstacles and misunderstandings she and her partner have already overcome and which she has no desire to ever experience again. Sometimes I read books, see the shortcomings that are causing friction in the fictional romance, and I recognize that I have the same faults. Suddenly I want to change them. Or I see my husband's faults, but through another set of eyes, and I have more sympathy and patience with them. My husband is my best friend and I love him with my whole heart, but sometimes he drives me crazy; a little fluff is usually a guaranteed way to get me to the forgiveness or apology I owe him. I truly believe that I am happier with my husband, and quite possibly more in love with him, because I have a healthy dose of fluff in my reading diet.
B. I have a career, and therefore better things to think about than that drivel.
Really? Because I happen to think my career is pretty awesome, but also pretty mentally and emotionally taxing, and when the work day is done, I haven't got the energy or the mental capacity to ponder the world's problems or to put myself through the wringer. I'd rather curl up with a cup of tea, the dog or one of the cats, and a book to help me relax, recharge, and refocus. You know what would not help me do that? Reading about pedagogical research. Reading about the intricacies of Latin grammar. Translating a particularly thorny passage of Tacitus. Those things are interesting to me, but they're also exhausting and do little to help me keep a sane perspective on the importance of work versus being a decent, well-adjusted human being. You know what will? Reading about ordinary people dealing with real problems in a positive way and getting a happy ending. Nothing about that will make me tired, stressed out, or out of touch with the living human beings in my life. It does a lot to build empathy, and although it may not create empathy with life experiences I will never have, it helps with the life I do have.
C. I'm smart and well-educated.
This is the one that I see kicking hardest against fluff reading. It's also the one that leaves me most in need of fluff. Here's the thing: cynicism is king in the world of the educated. Things which are popular must automatically be crap; things which are widely trusted are probably false and untrustworthy; things done by many people must be old-fashioned, bourgeois, and without merit. The better educated one is, the more one's loathing for anything put out by a major record label or major studio, and one's respect for anything produced independently should vary inversely with its popularity. Amanda Palmer tweeted something recently I found quite apt about how strange it is to live in a world in which being aesthetically pleasing is an artistic liability. Historical figures who have been widely admired are often presented in modern academia as terrible people and liars to boot; the government is at worst a corporately owned conspiracy and at best an irredeemable failure; things like monogamy, religion, and the consumption of animal products are for the ignorant and easily duped. There are plenty of reasons for this attitude, and cynicism is certainly warranted in many instances. But a diet of constant cynicism is neither a healthy one nor a happy one.
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So why read fluff as an intelligent, well-educated woman? In a social context that constantly argues that the only thing that shouldn't be doubted is the need to doubt everything, fluff reminds me that are some things that ought to be trusted. When biographies seem to say that there is no such thing as a truly good and admirable person because all heroes have dirty secrets in their pasts, fluff reminds me that there are plenty of good people in this world worthy of my love and respect, even though they come with flaws and failures. Despite the academic presumption that emotions are unnecessary hindrances (a presumption all too easy for me to embrace, given my natural inclination toward distrusting my emotions and operating solely based on reason), fluff reminds me that emotions are good, and healthy, and even beneficial. And when other books try to persuade me that there are no happy endings, only temporal moments of happiness, or that I am the only thing in which I can believe or hope, or that the world is crumbling around me, fluff reminds me that I can forge my own happy ending. Love may not be enough to fix the universe, but it's an awfully good start to fixing my own life and motivating me to care about fixing all the rest.
So if you made it all the way to the end of this giant post, thanks for listening to my two cents. I love literary fiction too (I'd be a pretty terrible lit teacher if I didn't), and a diet of all fluff wouldn't be any better for you than a diet of all oranges, but I really believe that fluff is more than just an unhealthy snack. Someday, maybe it can gain a new name and take its rightful place as part of a well-rounded literary diet instead of being relegated to a single, guilty bite after dinner.
two things occurred to me while reading this the first is I think distaste of fluff fiction come out of the literary fiction genre. I for a lot of people and historical I know this has been true literary fiction is the only "real" kind of fiction.
ReplyDeleteMy mom's best friend used to tease my mom about when she was going to start reading "grown up" books because my mom mostly reads science fiction and fantasy and never literary fiction. Literary fiction is all about the angst and the cynicism, "human life is suffering" stuff as far as I can tell. So I think anything that doesn't have that is seen as intellectually inferior.
The other thing that I thought of was that often when people (including me) say "fluff" what we mean is simple. There is nothing innately wrong or badly written about a story which is simple.
PS: I love reading about snails and slug sex, weirdly enough.It's just so different and our culture has a very heteronormative view of what reproductive sex in nature looks like it's just not true.
I think the distaste comes out of literary fiction but is by no means limited to literary fiction. I was inspired to write this post, actually, because of a review I read by an m/m author I like of another m/m author's book in which she basically said, "I liked everything about this story, but it was just fluff, so it's only worth 3.5 stars, and I recommend it as something light for in between the meatier, more emotionally momentous [implied: important] stories." It bothers me to see that attitude within the romance genre, which is itself so often relegated to "something light for in between the 'real' books", in part because the fluff stories are the ones that are typically the most emotionally meaty for me because they're the ones it's easiest for me to identify with and believe could really happen. (That being said, your portrayal of literary fiction is pretty much spot on: the more stark and hopeless the view of human existence, the more difficult to understand, the better it must be.)
DeleteI am also a person who has often used "fluff" to refer to something short or simple, and not in a derogatory way. But it's something that, the more I think about it, bothers me because of the implications of the word itself: it just implies that there's nothing to it. And that's not what I mean. Your stories, for instance, are simple, but they're not without meaning or substance. Piper Vaughn's books are often called "fluff", but they're also not without meaning or substance (nor are they always simple); I think they have some genuine meat to them. I guess my point is just that these books have value, and we call them by a term that by its very definition devalues them. But I don't know what to call them instead; even "simple fiction" sounds like it's worth less than "complex fiction".
I spent a week I did not really have to veer off and write a story so hopelessly sappy and fluffy that it will rot teeth. I'm already picturing the scathing reviews I will get for it because it has no 'substance' whatsoever. I just don't fucking care, because I posted one snippet of it and so many people were so goddamn fucking happy reading it. I will gladly be accused of fluff and nonsense any day of the week. I'm not going to be ashamed of making people happy.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's my point: you don't have anything to be ashamed of. It DOES make people happy, and there is so much value in that. But there's a whole lot more to defend fluff than just that, and nobody ever talks about those things, and I think it's detrimental to the people who feel they ought to turn up their noses at it.
DeleteI think it's really easy in these sorts of posts to slide from "here are the reasons fluff is great! =D" into "and here are the reasons literary fiction is terrible and not worth your time! >=(" And you're walking the line very well, so no worries! But you've touched on the one topic that drives ME bat-shit crazy: the fact that when these discussions come up, the two groups start making the same EXACT arguement against one another, (remember, it's not okay for them to hate us for X reason, but we can hate them for X reason) and then they want me to pick a side.
ReplyDeleteLook, I'm the bi-girl in the realm of fluff and literature (...and sexuality). I "swing both ways." Sometimes I have more preference toward one versus the other, but I like them both! And encountering hostility toward the other side when around folks who associate more toward one end of the spectrum is not a fun time. (Did anyone else read the "Bisexual: Not Such a Dirty Word" article over the weekend? If not, I'll link it below.) I feel like I can't talk about all the intricate allusions and statements about the human condition I'm weaving into a story when I'm around my fluff friends, while on the other side I can't babble on and on about how sweet and happy and ... FLUFF the snippet I wrote is when I'm around my literary folks. In the end, I spend a lot of time simply not talking--because neither side wants to hear about the other, and that, again, is not a fun time. In fact, it's downright lonely and more than a little depressing.
In the end, each has their place. Fluff and literary fiction can both be fantastic and exactly the thing you're wanting to read depending on the mood. One is not somehow magically better than the other simply because it belongs to one group versus then other. They both should exist. They both should be read--in a gneral sense, I'm not forcing them on anyone. They both should be embraced and celebrated and judged based on their own merits rather than compared to one another--they are different creatures but they are both good!
In summary, as my former boss used to settle our petty interoffice arguements, "Stop it, you're both pretty!"
And here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-browne/bisexual-not-such-a-dirty-word_b_2662176.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
Oh, I so hear you on that "let's both argue the same thing, and then we'll both get madder and madder and never change anyone's mind about anything, but feel increasingly justified" thing. I hope that's not how I came across, because that's not what I meant to say at all. I completely agree with you: what I really want to argue is that both have merit, but they're different merits, so neither one is inherently superior, and readers need a variety (hence the dorky diet analogy). And actually, I decided to write this post after reading a review by a genre fiction author of another work in the same genre, because it's much easier for me to understand why someone who doesn't like genre fiction can dismiss it as useless fluff than to understand why someone who writes genre fiction can dismiss other fiction in the same genre--which the author admittedly really enjoyed--as mere fluff, and therefore worthy of fewer stars and a recommendation with a caveat.
DeleteI am also the bi-girl in the reading realm, so I feel your pain; I love to put literary things into my writing, and I get so excited when I see them in things I'm reading (whatever the genre), but at the same time, I roll my eyes when I go to seminars on teaching AP Lit and the leaders denigrate "drugstore fiction" because it doesn't have any of those literary qualities (which, frankly, is bullshit--there's some great use of symbolism and allusion, and often some really beautiful diction, in genre fiction).
Thanks for the link. I'm looking forward to reading the article.
As someone who writes and reads fluff daily, I have read this post with the utmost interest. I must say, Julia, I'm extremely happy to see someone writing about fluff with pride and lack of prejudice, and you underlined some very good points.
ReplyDeleteI've read Dostoievsky, Albert Camus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and many other literary fiction writers, and while I enjoyed the reading on a pure intellectual level, I didn't find in these books the pleasure and joy plain and simple fluff books bring me. Why? Because we read literary fiction for the mind, but we read fluff for the heart and soul. I was just talking with my mom the other day about books 'cause she was regretting the fact she doesn't find enough time to read, and I said I can't imagine my life without reading something fluffy every day. I'm afraid lately my literary diet consist of just that, but I'm not ashamed by it. Fluff makes my heart happy. And with all the drama I have at work, just like you said, I can't go home and enjoy immersing myself in complicated literary fiction filled with drama and angst. I want to enjoy myself and escape the real life problems, read about happy things and feel the tension leave my body. I fell sorry for those who haven't discovered fluff yet.