Catch-up

About this.

Imagine you watch two movies.  The first movie is a porno. There's nothing particularly special about this porn, it is just a satisfactory example of pornographic film-making.  The performers are what you sense they should be, the plot line and dialogue are, as usual, largely excuses to get people naked, everything lives up to your expectations, but nothing in particular exceeds them. Then there's the second movie.  The second movie is billed as a porno, but as you watch it, you realize that the filmmakers have put time and money into the production.  The script is actually written by a professional, the actors do more than worry about when to take their clothes off, it looks like a real movie, only....it's still a porno.  Most scenes still end with a prolonged sexual act. And this throws off any enjoyment of the movie, because you don't know if you should invest time in the plot and the characters, or just treat it like you normally might i.e. fast forward until you see skin.



There's a scene in Boogie Nights (a fave of mine), where Burt Reynolds, the 70's porn director, explains his vision to Mark Wahlberg.  He hopes to make a porn film so good that people will stay in the theater to watch it, even after they've "creamed their pants".  As I read "Outlander", I kept thinking back to this speech.  Diana Gabaldon uses the framework and conventions of a romance novel, but within those frames, she aspires to more.  It's a worthy goal, but it fails, largely because she focuses on the love story so much that all other plot-lines and never ties up loose ends and hints that are introduced.  It doesn't help that, right as the story gets going, there is a 50 page section where the main characters do nothing but make love (several times, not just one long copulation), which, enticing as that sounds, only serves to apply screeching brakes to the story, and it takes a long while to get any momentum back.

"Scoundrel's Honor", on the other hand, is exactly what I expected it to be, and what I imagine is a typical romance novel.  I could be wrong, after all, these are the first two romances I've read, but the reviews I've read online would confirm that.  Where "Outlander" tries to connect you with it's characters, "Scoundrel" is pure escapism, and reads more like an chick-flick adventure movie than an actual novel.  And I think that's what Rosemary Rogers is going for.  She's not trying to present any deep thoughts, she's trying to help you forget about your life (or lack of) for a few hours.  And, interestingly, a few hours was all it took; I ran through "Scoundrel" in record time, not because it was that gripping (It wasn't), but because I didn't have to stop and think about anything.  My reading comprehension is pretty good, and after honing that on historical non-fiction and the terrifically deep selections that the book club makes, ripping through Rogers book was like taking a butcher knife to Wonder Bread.

Back to the opening, if you ask the question "Which was the best movie?", the answer seems easy, as the second movie at least tries to be more than a hump-flick.  But if you change the question slightly, to "Which movie was a success?", that's where I'm at with the two books, and it's tricky.  Gabaldon is trying to write a novel, to suggest more than your average harlequin, but in that, she fails. Rogers is shooting much lower, but she nails her target dead-on.  I don't know which is better in this case, the book that has high ambitions and falls well short, or the book that doesn't ask much of you, but delivers everything it promises.  You might be able to tell already, but I didn't care for either book.  Which is not surprising, I'm not who these books are written for.  That might also be why, if asked which one I'd read again, I'd (reluctantly) pick "Scoundrel" over "Outlander".  I can't say this for the genre of books that I usually inhabit, but in a literary group that I am uncomfortable in, I'll take the title that succeeds at under-reaching over the one that over-reaches and misses.