At The Awl, Maria Bustillos takes a closer look at romance novels, characterizing the genre as “underground writing,” while wondering what makes literature “trivial”?
“There are distinct advantages in this poor-cousin status. Here is a literature entirely without pretense; its authors are guileless, since they needn’t conform to any external ideal of literary performance. They are in no way trying to win a Booker Prize. Consequently they are entirely at liberty to explore their own questions within the few confines of their genre.”
