I don’t like french fries. They’re soggy, cold, mealy and tasteless. Oh, the hot, crisp, golden-brown ones? I don’t think of them as french fries…

The blogosphere is exploding with attacks on chick lit.
Look here (and the several dozen responses that follow), here (ditto), here, and here (comment #2).

Look here and here for a few well-written responses.

The most interesting thing I’ve noted on all of these posts is that the people proclaiming the loudest about their dislike for the genre of chick lit said mainly that they didn’t like the fashion-obsession and the shopping and the stupid heroines and the deus ex machina happy endings and the plotless books. To my thinking, that’s like saying you don’t like romance because you hate books with arranged marriages or beautiful bluestocking heroines or rich heroes or secret babies. That is not what comprises the genre, folks.

But when someone tries to make that point by presenting examples of chick lit books that don’t have the qualities the chick-haters describe, the response was almost universally, “Oh, I don’t think of that as chick lit.”

Well, isn’t that convenient! It’s so much easier to dismiss an entire genre when you decide that any book that doesn’t have the qualities you dislike is not part of that genre.

Sheesh. This is why so many chick lit writers are disavowing their own genre, why my own editor is describing my book as “more than chick lit.” Isn’t it better to say that the genre is more than what the detractors are calling it? I’ve read flat, shallow chick lit books that I’ve disliked, and I’ve read riveting, deeply funny, deeply moving books about women growing into their lives and taking charge and saving themselves. One of my very good writing friends say that the true romance in chick lit is about loving yourself.

To misquote agent Lucienne Diver: “Don’t tell me that you space-set book with the phase-guns isn’t science fiction because it’s better than science fiction. Don’t put down your own genre.”

My book is chick lit. It’s a coming-of-age story about a young woman told in a tart, funny, confessional tone. She doesn’t go shopping (though I think I mention her picking up a package of underwear in chapter one), she’s not an idiot (though she could probably stand to brush up a bit on her literary critics), there’s suspense and drama and plot to spare and she’s going to have to fight pretty damn hard for her happy ending.

I do not write in the “shopping genre.” I write modern, funny, female-oriented coming-of-age stories. I don’t give a shit about shoes, but it’s still chick lit.