…Seattle Times book review today. It’s about Love’s Confusions, a delightful little academic treatise comparing how various thinkers have thought about desire and devotion over the centuries.

The most famous brand in romance novels, “Harlequin Romance,” is apparently to be retired next year. The company’s still churnin’ out the paperbacks; but the firm’s specialty lines have taken the sales, and the shelf space, away from what had been its flagship series.

Masculine-oriented readers might scoff at ’em, but romances are the last commercially successful branch of old-fashioned pulp fiction. They’re “adventure” stories written to precise pubilsher-decreed formulae–just as the Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, the Shadow, Tarzan, and Doc Savage had been.

Horror, sci-fi, mystery, and action novels are still being published in paperback, of course; but those industry segments are, for the most part, not as centrally editorially-controlled as they used to be (with some exceptions, such as Star Trek novels).

No, it’s the romances that are still this heavily pre-planned by the home office. Each “series” brand has its own characteristics–length, setting, characters, explicitness level (some of the racier romance lines are now the only sexual material allowed for sale at Wal-Mart).

This obsession with order and contrivance can be seen in some of the “chick lit” novels marketed to women who consider themselves too hip to read romances. “Chick lit” stories might not always have happy endings, but they seem to all have perky young heroines who all live in glamorous cities and all have glamorous AND high-paying careers, just like the heroines in certain romance series. (Trust me on this: In the real world, nobody who writes for an alternative weekly newspaper can afford Sarah Jessica Parker’s wardrobe.)

We’ll leave this item with a totally unrelated aphorism from the source of this news flash, “Superromance” novelist Susan Gable: “Beware of men with expensive, flashy cars and expensive, flashy teeth.”

According to the alt-media conventional wisdom, when TV and radio ratings decline, major-label CD sales slump, and major-studio movie ticket sales stagnate, it’s supposed to be a hopeful omen toward the impending demise of the “dinosaurs.” But when book sales show a similar slump, we’re all supposed to get outraged n’ frightful that those rubes out there in bad ol’ mainstream America aren’t consuming what’s good for ’em.

The truth lies elswhere.

High, low, and middlebrow content throughout the mechanical (print) and analog (broadcast) media have had to make room in the public “mindspace” for these newfangled digital media (Internet, DVDs, video games, et al.). It’ll all sort out eventually, leaving some investors (of time, energy, and/or money) into various of these media prosprous and others forlorn.

…a novel that had an illustration for every page was called a “Big Little Book.” Zak Smith’s personal project to create “Illustrations for Every Page of Gravity’s Rainbow“ might be considered a Big Big Big Book.

…Lemony Snicket (hearts) H. P. Lovecraft.

…by yrs. truly in the Seattle Times concerns two memoirs with one plot-point in common—that high-flyiin’ enlightenment salesman Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

Erotic Harry Potter fan fiction.

I arrived at the notorious “can of Spam building” on Howell Street, across from Re-bar, promptly at 7:15 a.m. Entercom now runs four stations from the building, including KNDD, where I was supposed to speak.

The 16th floor entrance beheld a permanent sign on the glass doors: DOOR IS LOCKED. RECEPTIONIST WILL OPEN. Only there was no receptionist. There was nobody in sight. Here it was, commercial radio’s most competitive day-part, and the joint seemed deserted.

After fifteen minutes of this ominous/glorious silence, Justin Chamberlin, KNDD’s morning show producer showed up at the door, let me in, and guided me down a thin, steep spiral staircase to the studio.

Down on the fifteenth floor were all the usual radio-station wall decorations—”goofy” promotional displays, Gold Record Awards honoring the station’s part in promoting assorted silly corporate-rock hits. After a short walk we were in the studio, overlooking I-5 and the west slope of Capitol Hill. DJ No-Name briskly introduced himself. I sat at a vacant microphone, quickly donned some headphones, and the interview was underway.

This is an hour at which, if I’m awake, I’m usually incoherent. Nevertheless, I managed to speak at least semi-lucidly for twelve uninterrupted minutes (a rare privilege in bigtime, morning-drive-time commercial radio, as I don’t have to tell you).

I talked about how Cobain wrote that he’d wished he could have been as audience-lovin’ as Freddy Mercury. I listed a few of the most important people in NW music history, such as early recording engineer Kearney Barton. I plugged Loser and The Myrtle of Venus. I mentioned my attendance at Neumo’s for Kim Warnick’s “retirement roast” the previous night. (More about that later, perhaps.)

Then it was time to play another Green Day oldie or whatever. Chamberlin efficiently saw me out the door. My bit to help save an endangered industry was through.

…in the Seattle Times today. This one’s about Strange Angel. It’s the biography of John Parsons, a sci-fi fandom pioneer, a sex-cult leader, and one of the inventors of modern rocket science.

…Random House reader-poll responders. Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard did not write the best English-language novels of all time.

Kerrick Mainrender responds to a recent link item on this site:

“Out of curiosity I linked to that Morgan Hawke article, and while romances may indeed not be mindless, I found some misconceptions that are anything but helpful.The author seems to think that all women have the exact same development and needs–not true. Not all follow the same ‘character arc’ [or zigzag, or whatever]. Neither do men–this ‘mythic past’ stuff always seemed simplistic and overgeneralized–stereotyped, in fact.

Some children had secrets from Daddy right from the start [from Mommy too–where’s Mom in all those fairy tales anyway?] Sometimes a horse symbolizes something other than ‘masculine sexuality’–mobility, speed, endurance, for starters. Sometimes Beauty meets a female Beast. And so on.

Finally, first sex is NOT always painful. I don’t see why it should ever have to be, and if the young were educated right maybe it wouldn’t. That myth has got to go.

Ms Hawke can write about whatever fictive universe, with whatever rules, she wants to–we all have our favorites I am sure–but it isn’t a good idea to get ’em mixed up with the world you and I live in every day.

My sympathy for the loss of your father, and hopes that these difficult times can be surmounted, for you and all of us.”

Thanks. As I always say, women aren’t just different from men, they’re different from other women.

Mainrender also sends along a recommendation for the sexuality-info site Teenwire.

…Morgan Hawke offers “A Heroine’s Mythic Journey – A Character Arc of Female Sexuality.”

…but a reputable newspaper claims author Margaret Atwood’s invented a long-distance autograph machine.

…in the Seattle Times today. It’s all about the Hungarian novelist Imre Kertész, a former teenage Holocaust survivor whose works reflect a lifetime of unhealable soul-scars.

I’ve been on a political-news fast since this morning. I’m refusing to get bitter, depressed, or frustrated.

I’ve been cleansing and renewing my mind with Looney Tunes and Doctor Who DVDs, with Comcast digital cable’s opera music channel, with the coffee-table book Playboy: The Photographs, and with the last two stories in my main man D.F. Wallace’s anthology Oblivion. And I’ve been trying to jump-start my one-month novel, to little success thus far.

Tomorrow, I’m likely to spend the day locked up with my yet-to-be-written novel. I might read only the sports and living sections of the newspaper. I’ll go out later that evening, but will instruct my schmoozing companions to stick to discussing personal and/or upbeat topics.

I’m sure that within a few days, I’ll have something to say about the national tragedies. Until then, let me remind you of a certain famous fictional political organizer, “Boss” Jim W. Gettys.

As played by future Perry Mason costar Ray Collins in Orson Welles’s film classic Citizen Kane, this “W.” is an admitted “no gentleman,” a crook and grafter. He’s the target of the egotistical-yet-populistic publisher Charles Foster Kane’s short-lived political career. (In the first draft of the screenplay, it’s clearer that Kane isn’t running for office directly against Gettys, but against Democratic and Republican candidates who are both in Gettys’s pocket.)

It ends badly. Gettys finds and exploits a scandal in Kane’s personal life. On election night, Kane’s right-hand man instructs the press-room staff at Kane’s New York Inquirer to use a pre-set front page headline, “Charles Foster Kane Defeated—FRAUD AT POLLS!.”

Kane wastes the rest of his life as a grumpy old conservative hermit, with no sense of humor and horrid artistic tastes.

Dear God, please don’t let me end up like that.