Spiritually confused narrators, obsessive authors, and vibrators—Romance has birthed a thousand different songs and books.
But only a few stand out as truly unique. This Valentine’s Day, discover how different authors throughout time talk honestly about love, refusing to shy away from their flaws and desires.
Beautiful Losers (1966) by Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen was first and foremost a poet, then became the singer-songwriter most people recognize him for, and finally transitioned into a novelist. This development is evident in his second and last fiction novel, Beautiful Losers, which reads like an extensive prose poem. It delves into the morally ambiguous lives of its unnamed protagonist, his wife, Edith, and his best friend and mentor, F.
The novel opens in a hotel room in Montreal, where the narrator reflects upon his wife’s recent suicide and the sudden death of his eccentric friend, F., the only two people he’s ever truly loved. Alone and confused, the narrator wonders if he has failed his wife (by extension failing to sympathize with the female condition) and if he ever truly understood his friend’s teachings.
When I picked up Beautiful Losers, I was not surprised to find that Cohen’s protagonist was decadent and romantic, all at once; a man tortured by the irresistible beauty of the world (which he depicts through a back-and-forth of beautiful and vulgar language) and his guilty conscience.
What stands out from this redemption romance novel is that it is anchored in the narrator’s obsession with a religious figure: Saint Catherine Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be recognized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. He is entranced by her decision to convert to Catholicism and to remain a virgin for the rest of her life, but most of all he somehow believes that by understanding her suffering and devotion, he will be able to forgive himself.
“What is a saint? … Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape,” he writes. “He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love
I first became entranced with Cohen when I noticed a bizarre pattern in his song lyrics: He merges the sacred with the profane, converting themes we would consider taboo, such as sex and betrayal, into divine elements that make up our flawed humanity. This novel accomplishes the same thing.
Cohen follows eloquent and compassionate paragraphs about the sexualization of women with humorous statements that leave one with nothing else to do but to laugh in acceptance of the perversity of humanity:
“F. once said: At sixteen I stopped f—ing faces. I had occasioned the remark by expressing disgust at his latest conquest, a young hunchback he had met while touring an orphanage. F. spoke to me that day as if I were truly one of the underprivileged; or perhaps he was not speaking to me at all when he uttered: Who am I to refuse the universe?”
In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) (2009)
This play, set in the 1880s, is about female hysteria, the invention of electricity, gender roles, and the ways in which all of these elements began to slowly push two lovers apart. As ridiculous as it sounds, it is one of the most romantic things I have ever read in my life.
American scholar Rachel P. Maines claims that during the 17th century, hysteria was the second most common diagnosis in women after fevers. Hysteria could be anything from the expression of a woman’s emotional distress, to any sign of unconventional behavior, encapsulated as simply a “tendency to cause trouble for others.”
In response to this, doctors, inspired by the rise of electric devices, invented what we now call the vibrator as a treatment for women’s so-called hysteria.
In Sarah Ruhl’s 2009 play, Dr. Givings invents a new device to treat his patients, who he takes care of in a room inside his home. The act has no sexual connotations, and Dr. Givings is proud of the success of his new medical discovery.
But despite Dr. Giving’s scientific abilities, he lacks an ability for emotional connection, a fact that he ignores by immersing himself in work while his young wife Mrs. Givings, a new mother, suffers in silence.
Intrigued by the sounds coming from the next room, Mrs. Givings spends her days eavesdropping and trying to figure out what her husband’s treatments consist of. For a significant part of the novel, the female protagonist remains cornered, unable to express her feelings or desires to her husband. She shares this state of oppression with all of Dr. Givings’ female patients, who are brought by their husbands, sometimes unwillingly, to be cured.
“Thank you Dr. Givings,” says one of the secondary characters, who finds his wife’s pain to be an inconvenience. “You have no idea what a source of anguish my wife’s illness has been to me.”
As Mrs. Givings’ mental health deteriorates, Dr. Givings must come up with a new solution, one that does not require scientific revolution. Ultimately, the play lays out the many obstacles that modern relationships face. While inventions such as the lightbulb have made life easier, when it comes to love, the simple things matter enormously, even though they are often the hardest to provide. Intimacy does not require much more than emotional presence.
“Do you not think, Mrs. Givings, that snow is always kind?” one of the female patients asks Mrs. Givings. “Because it has to fall slowly, to meet the ground slowly, or the eyelash slowly— And things that meet each other slowly are kind.”
I Love Dick (1977) by Chris Kraus
I personally wouldn’t read this one in public. The cover flashes its title in bold, all-capitalized letters. But do not mistake this 1977 novel for simply a provocative marketing strategy. Chris Kraus, the author of this partially nonfiction novel, truly does love Dick Hebdige, the British academic, and the novel is proof of her unapologetic obsession. She loves him so much that after its publication, Hebdige sued the author for defamation.
Told in an epistolary narration, Kraus tells the story of how she met Hebdige while being married to her husband, Sylvère, and how her fixation transformed into a mostly one-sided relationship, which she describes in detail for the whole world to see.
The book is a composition of thousands of love letters that Kraus has written to Hebdige, delivering them to his home address, which she implicitly understands he leaves unread.
Kraus is an artist married to another artist, which explains why Sylvère goes along with it, believing that she is supporting the unbound creativity of Kraus’ latest project.
Kraus wants to explore what it must be like to let oneself be completely carried away by love, even if it’s unreciprocated. As the novel progresses, and the project begins to drive her to insanity, Sylvère becomes increasingly concerned and begins to write letters too, in an attempt to express his distress to the reader.
Labeled as a feminist novel, I believe that I Love Dick’s true accomplishment is not that it empowers women to follow their passions, but that it lays out the ground for an interesting study on a true neurotic:
“Knowing you’s like knowing Jesus,” she writes in the closing of one of her many letters. “There are billions of us and only one of you so I don’t expect much from you personally. There are no answers to my life. But I’m touched by you and fulfilled just by believing.”
Nevertheless, moments of lucidity shine within the novel, and there is something deeply honest to be celebrated in the publication of her romantic failures:
“Because shame was what we always felt, me and all my girlfriends, for expecting sex to breed complicity,” she writes in a vulnerable moment.
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