By Andrea Aurichio

Feb. 21, 1982

 

Andrea Aurichio was a frequent freelance contributor to The New York Times. She also became a close friend of my mother and the family. Here is a great article she wrote that appeared in “The Times” about my Mom, and the industry at the time.

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THERE has never been a better time for romance. The grand passion is all the rage. Harems, knights in shining armor, scoundrels and handsome heroes and brave damsels who defy distress are carousing their way across the pages of best-selling romance novels, spurred on by the grandest passion of all, love.

On Long Island as well as around the nation, bookstores can't keep up with their customers' demand for romance titles, libraries can't keep the copies on their shelves and writers of the genre are busy keeping up with publishers' offers for new manuscripts. Everyone, it seems, wants love.

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''We are selling thousands of these books a month,'' said Alida Roochvarg, owner of Paperback Bookseller in Hempstead. ''We have regular readers who come in and buy six books at a time. The reader who buys romance fiction wants to be entertained. They want to escape and be transported to another world for a few hours.''

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Many romance writers acknowledge writing for women who want to read about romance at 3 o'clock in the afternoon because they know it isn't going to walk through the door at 6. Others are simply out to tell a good story and earn a dollar.

 

Publishers depict the average romance reader as a 41-year-old female with some college education, a part-time job, two children and an annual household income of $22,000. About 20 million readers spent $200 million on romance fiction last year. The romance readership is becoming more diverse all the time, now encompassing teen-agers, women of all ages and education and a small but growing number of male readers.

''I think people who read romance want to be entertained,'' said Bertrice Small of Southold. ''They want to read about characters who are larger than life.'' Mrs. Small is the author of such best-selling romance novels as ''The Kadin,'' ''Love Wild and Fair,'' ''Adora'' and ''Skye O'Malley,'' which was on The New York Times best-seller list for 11 weeks in 1981.

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This season Mrs. Small is once again the belle of the romantic fiction ball, having already hit No. 8 on the best-seller trade paperback lists with her new book, ''Unconquered.'' The book, released in January, took off immediately.

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''Admittedly, sex sells these books,'' Mrs. Small said. ''But sex only sells to a certain extent. After that you build your reputation by word-of-mouth. I think people read my books because I tell a good story. After all, how many times can you describe copulation before it becomes boring?''

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Romance writers are prolific, often turning out 500-page books within six months. Writers of historical romance such as Roberta Gellis complete a book in four to five months. At the age of 54, Mrs. Gellis is a veteran of the genre, having written 17 books in the study of her Roslyn Heights home.

 

''In the late 60's,'' Mrs. Gellis said, ''this genre was dying because people wanted relevance. Today they want entertainment.'' While sex also features prominently in Mrs. Gellis's books, she attests to historical accuracy, regaling her readers with incidents and plots taken from the pages of the books about medieval history that line the shelves of her study.

 

''I object to being called a smut writer,'' Mrs. Gellis said. ''Romance writing has been around a long time. This is nothing new. Yes, sex plays a prominent part in my books. Sex plays a prominent part in life. I'm interested in people. I'm interested in love. While I aim for a certain realism, I do not emphasize the ugliness or the brutality of medieval life; however, my knights in shining armor do have body odors.''

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Kathryn Falk, the Brooklyn Heights author of a book about romance novelists titled ''Love's Leading Ladies,'' offers a simple method of detecting a book's contents by its often provocative cover. ''If a hero's hands are below the heroine's waist, you can expect a racier book than if the embrace is above the waist,'' she said.

Miss Falk is also the publisher of Romantic Times, a tabloid founded in Brooklyn Heights in July 1980 designed to keep readers, writers and booksellers abreast of all the latest news in the world of torrid embraces. The publication is now circulating 50,000 an edition.

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There are thousands of romance writers at work today. Some write alone, others write in teams and men write under feminine pseudonyms. Michael Hinkemeyer, a Manhasset author, is known to his readers as Vanessa Royall, a pen name given to him by one of his publishers, Dell Books, in 1978. Mr. Hinkemeyer, a 41-year-old former history professor, began writing historical romances in 1977 with the encouragement of his agent.

 

While many female authors, editors and readers claim an ability to discern male and female writers by the way they write love scenes, Mr. Hinkemeyer has not found his sex to be a liability in what is widely regarded as a ''woman's world.'' His book sales, running nearly half a million copies on a single title, seem to indicate that readers do not mind that Vanessa Royall is really Michael Hinkemeyer.

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''I always answer my mail which is addressed to Vanessa Royall by signing my own name,'' Mr. Hinkemeyer said. ''I can write love scenes as well as many of the women writers, despite a publisher's prejudice that women want to read love stories written by women.''

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The discerning reader might better be able to tell the sex of authors, according to Mr. Hinkemeyer, by their descriptions of the female characters' clothing. ''That might give me away,'' he said. ''I know nothing about bustles and flounces.''

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With a total of 10 novels published and a new title, ''Wild Wind Westward,'' scheduled for publication next month by Dell, Mr. Hinkemeyer plans to continue writing in the genre. ''I enjoy writing these books,'' he said. The current popularity of the romance genre on the Island as well as elsewhere is more of a cultural phenomenon than a literary one, he believes.

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Best-selling romance authors rank among the top 10 percent of the nation's writers in terms of income. Some writers started as avid readers of the genre, then were subsequently discovered by editors who read their manuscripts at large publishing houses. One such editor is Pamela Strickler, a romance editor at Ballantine Books who reads scores of manuscripts each season. ''I look for a heroine to identify with, a hero to fall in love with, and a good story,'' Miss Strickler said.

 

While part of the current success of this literary form can be attributed to women's boredom with broken washing machines, dull husbands, dirty socks, car pools and television soap operas, another part of its success can be attributed to the publishers' flirtation with the female book-buying public.

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''There has been a dramatic swing in readership since the late 40's,'' said Marcus Jaffe, editor in chief and vice president at Ballantine Books, who has a home in Sag Harbor. ''In the 40's publishers incorrectly perceived the book buyer as being almost exclusively male. They gradually discovered a readership that was 80 percent female. Then they began to publish books that appealed to women and sell these books in places where women spent money.''

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The convenience of paperback books as well as their easy rack sale at supermarkets, drugstores and suburban shopping malls has helped not only the romance genre, but the entire book publishing business as well. Many houses, however, still disdain their line of romance titles as rent payers that finance the publication of ''good books'' and ''great literataure.''

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Today, candidates for B.A. degrees as well as master's degrees are writing their theses on romance literature. This spring Long Island University will sponsor a romantic-book lovers' convention at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan, on April 17.

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''No one ever said this was William Faulkner,'' Mr. Jaffe said. ''We're publishing these books because people have a need for entertainment. If they gradually decide to read other books, fine. At least we've got them as readers. There's a place for romance.’'

 

At Paperback Bookseller in Hempstead there is also a place for romance. Mrs. Roochvarg, like countless other booksellers on the Island, has moved the romance titles closer to the front of the store.

''I think people read these books because some women need to think that things will be all right if only they could meet the right guy - then they wouldn't have to worry forever,'' Mrs. Roochvarg said.

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Will the need for escapism prove as fickle, as fleeting and as elusive as love itself? ''I don't think so,'' Mr. Jaffe said. The genre will hold up. It's depression-proof.'' As they say in romantic novels: ''Ah, love is eternal. She longed to feel his burning kisses on her neck ...''