I will take a risk and say Elizabeth Archibald, then senior at Yale and editor of the Yale Review Of Books, is not a romance fan.  In this article, she debates the virtues of writing romance.  Could be me, maybe I’m mis-reading her here, maybe I’m a bit slow, but I’m thinking she’s decided to pass on this career choice.  Apparently nobody bothered to tell her how easy it is to write and sell a romance novel… oh, wait, yes someone did.  See: 

Maybe I’m overconfident, but how hard would it be to devise adventures for young amnesiac bombshells who meet buff orphans and achieve perfect, pulsating harmony?

Lest you think that is her most clever line, read this part:

One publisher is seeking manuscripts that involve “marriage of convenience, secret babies, single fathers, amnesia victims, and weddings.” I wonder if I could create an ass-kicking bombshell who succumbs to a marriage of convenience (having given birth secretly) to an amnesia victim.

Now, I have to admit that I’m not a big fan of most of the hooks she mentions.  I’m on a bit of a Harlequin hiatus myself thanks to some of these.  And, every now and then, in the privacy of my living room, I’m sure I’ve chuckled and thought something like this even though I know better.  Of course, I’m not as clever as Elizabeth so I probably couldn’t have said it as well as she did.  See, I didn’t go to Yale. 

I wonder if she knows the young woman who wrote a similar article for the Harvard Independent and touched off this discussion.  Maybe the Ivy League chicks get together and think this stuff up over, uhhh, whatever it is they do in their spare time.  Reading Tolstoy in the mother tongue, maybe?  Hmmm.  Don’t know.  I guess I’ll never know.   

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