Thou Knowest the People, That They Are Set On Mischief

People do not deserve to have good writing; they are so pleased with bad. — Emerson, The Heart of Emerson’s Journals The Lady of the House began reading romance novels under the respectable flag of irony. “Oh, it’s funny, because the writing is so bad,” she said, as if conducting fieldwork among the primitives. But irony is a fig leaf with poor tensile strength. Before long, the leaf dropped. She was reading them openly, happily, without apology. Then came the minotaurs. There is a romance novel in which a woman works at a facility where she “milks” minotaurs and falls in love with one. When I mentioned this, expecting at least a ceremonial shudder, she not only knew of the book but defended the nuances of its storytelling. A postal carrier I know then informed me that there is also a genre called “sentient object” romance in which women fall in love with inanimate objects. Doors, for example. Not metaphorical doors. Doors. At such moments, one understands Emerson. Hell, one…