Curtis Sittenfeld’s ‘Romantic Comedy’: Review

“So, how about this…” someone challenges Sally Milz, the leading lady of Curtis Sittenfeld in Romantic comedy, “can you define cheese for me? Because I still haven’t figured out, after two decades, where the line is between cheese and emotional extravagance that’s acceptable. What makes a song, a movie or a real life moment land on one side or the other?

What a question for Sally, who has spent years dramatizing, and yes, ridiculing, pop culture as a veteran writer in a fictional iteration of Saturday night live (The Night Owls, or TNO). What a question for Sittenfeld, whose impressively varied collection of works straddles both sides of the literary/commercial fiction binary: that much-contested dichotomy that skeptics feel shouldn’t exist, doesn’t exist, or isn’t well-defined enough to establish its existence in one way. way or another.

What is literary fiction? What is commercial fiction? Are they really different? A variation of discourse around this binary assumption has been going on for years. It takes different forms, but it goes something like this: people, often writers, think that novels and their authors (or authors and their novels) belong more or less in one bucket or the other. When pushed to define the parameters of these cubes, things get hazy and sometimes become quite a sexist division, especially since a colloquial cousin of “commercial fiction” is “women’s fiction.” In a 2012 essay in He New York TimesMeg Wolitzer wrote“Yeah The marriage plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, had it been written by a woman but still had the same title and the same wedding ring on the cover, would it have received much serious literary attention? Or would this novel (which I loved) have been relegated to “Women’s Fiction,” that closed bottom shelf where books that emphasize relationships and the inner lives of women are often relegated? She adds: “Will ‘Women’s Fiction’ become such a nonsensical category that it will be eliminated altogether?”

The term women’s fiction is especially laughable when you consider who tends read fiction more voraciously: women. As Adam O’Fallon Price, one of the contributors to this conversation, rightly points out in the Paris review“’Fiction that appeals to women more than men is, as we know, ‘fiction.’”

Although not everyone who subscribes to this distinction between literary and commercial fiction sees the latter as interchangeable with “women’s fiction,” sometimes the lines get blurred. Other times, it’s a set of styles and “vibes” (for lack of a better word) that determine a book’s label. Conversational prose versus lofty prose. Linguistic stunts. Detachment versus sincerity. Maybe even sales numbers; the term “popular fiction” is sometimes used as a synonym for commercial fiction. The presence or absence of happiness and fun has also appeared in this mix. Surely cheesy would go in the trade bucket, making the recurring question in Romantic comedy (What is cheesy and how much is allowed?) quite relevant to the subject of commercial and literary fiction. It should also be noted that, in addition to any pretense from readers, marketing and sales are drivers of gender labeling. In any case, it is a subject that is often discussed and rarely resolved.

In its Paris review essay, O’Fallon Price notes how Sittenfeld has “challenged this dull paradigm”, situating her as a leader in a group of writers who are “both popular and literary and seem to have no problem putting one foot in each category”. Price contrasts Sittenfeld’s reception with that of writers such as Alice Munro and Marilynne Robinson. Despite the “domestic” themes and female-identifying main characters, Munro and Robinson are not discarded in the female fiction pile.

Others who might be alongside Sittenfeld in the literary overlap are Gillian Flynn and sally rooney, though the latter seems to be more unequivocally received in the literary field, despite its ease with business themes (often ranging from young people keeping jobs to divorce, death, and falling in and out of love). And then there are those who are considered women’s fiction writers “almost based on their popularity,” says O’Fallon Price. A book by a female-identifying writer who sells heavily on airport newsstands might have to go through more hoops, critically or otherwise, to be considered literary, though this may be changing as writers with more literary reputations, such as Yaa Gyasi and Rebecca Makkai, fill those same display charts.

Sittenfeld’s eight books cover a wide range. His first novel Homeworkwhich appeared in The New York TimesList of the best books of 2005 together with the work of zadie smithHaruki Murakami, and joan didion, is about a teenager in a boarding school; the most recent book of hers before Romantic comedy, Rodham, it’s about Hillary Rodham Clinton (if she had never become a Clinton).

If someone very deferential to the commercial/literary binomial intervened, they could put Rodham in the literary bucket and Romantic comedy in the trading hub though Rodham offers some of the attractive characteristics of popular fiction and Romantic comedy offers something of the curiosity and eloquence on which Sittenfeld drew to write his more “serious” novels. (Even this summary of biases falls prey to the same biases.) Homework, and how difficult it was to pin down a novel, from the early years, no less, that treats its adolescent protagonist and her concerns soberly and in earnest prose. They might also be confused by Sittenfeld’s decision to write Romantic comedy after writing some of his most literary works, because when one strictly adheres to the literary/commercial binomial, one inevitably sees him better and more advanced, rarer and more praiseworthy. Why would someone demonstrably capable of literary fiction mess with popular fiction?

One possibility is that they just don’t care. in a conversation with Bethanne Patrick for the Los Angeles Times about Romantic comedy, Sittenfeld remembers asking himself: “Am I allowed to write a book that has such a purely funny premise? And then I realized that the answer to my own question was yes, I’m allowed to. I give myself permission. The quote implies an acknowledgment of the literary/business talk, but also a clear choice not to be bothered by it, adept as Sittenfeld is in both modes.

In its recent review of the book, satirizing the artificial literary/commercial dichotomy, The Tribune of the Stars he joked, “What is this? Has Curtis Sittenfeld written a romantic comedy? She waits, isn’t she a serious literary writer, a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers Workshop whose work has appeared in the new yorker and vanity fair? A writer whose best-selling novels (including american wife and Homework) have been translated into 30 languages, included in many “best of the year” lists and selected for TV shows and movies? That Curtis Sittenfeld is writing a romantic comedy?

Romantic comedyhow does it happen, is a romantic comedy. The novel begins at a weekly pitch meeting attended by Noah Brewster, a celebrated musician residing in TNO this week. During the meeting, Sally proposes a skit featuring Noah as a literal cheesemaker, mocking the sentimentality of his own songs. It is at the after-show party that Noah petitions him for the definition of cheesy. At this moment, Sally and Noah have shared an intense week, since every week is TNO— filled with rewrites, essays, and the moments between making and producing instant, direct-to-consumer art. But it hardly occurs to Sally that Noah might be seriously interested in her. In a real way, sexism and an allergy to sentimentality pose significant obstacles to Sally’s happiness. It’s a dynamic that feels evocative of the ennoblement of literary over commercial fiction. He insists that sincerity be tempered by detachment and cynicism.

When Noah asks Sally if she would like or hate a man showing up to serenade him in public, she replies, “Good question. I think she would maybe aspire to hate him, but secretly love him.” Noah presses: “Why would it be better to hate him? Why is it corny?

Good question, actually. So what explains the aversion to cheese, literary or otherwise? Perhaps it’s an attempt to lose the sugary complacency, the intellectual sloppiness, even the indifference to harm that sometimes accompanies love stories or other serious narratives. But not all commercial, popular, or “women’s fiction” works have these traits, nor do all have happy endings. Okay, maybe it’s just an overapplication of a legitimate concern. Or maybe it’s snobbery. Or sexism.

On Twitter recently, Sittenfeld joked on her audience: “A reporter asked me if I was worried that the title or cover of my new novel would put off men, but I’m not worried because my seven male readers are very loyal and I think they will like it.”

Readers (including the dozens of people featuring men who responded to your tweet) willpower like. And people interested in this binary conversation should read it, not in small part because Sittenfeld sets up a story whose plot itself asks Noah’s question. But you’ll have to read to the end to find out how Sally, who’s in the mockery business, and Sittenfeld, who’s in the imagination business, might answer it.