Only 03 - Only You

political. Their characters, through love, transcend the ordinary and partake of the extraordinary.
    That, not bulging muscles or magic weapons, is the essence of heroic myth: humans touching transcendence. It is an important point that is often misunderstood. The essence of myth is that it is a bridge from the ordinary to the extraordinary. As Joseph Campbell said many times, through myth we all touch, if only for a few moments, something larger than ourselves, something transcendent.
    Unfortunately, transcendence has been out of intellectual favor for several generations. Thus the war between optimism and pessimism rages on, and popular culture is its battlefield. Universities and newspapers are heavily stocked with people who believe that pessimism is the only intelligent philosophy of life; therefore, optimists are dumb as rocks.
    How many times have you read a review that disdains a book because it has a constructive resolution of the central conflict—also known as a happy ending? The same reviewer will then praise another book for its relentless portrayal of the bleakness of everyday life.
    This is propaganda, not criticism. What the critics are actually talking about is their own intellectual bias, their own chosen myth: pessimism. They aren’t offering an intelligent analysis of an author’s ability to construct and execute a novel.
    Contrary to what the critics tell us, popular fiction is not a swamp of barely literate escapism; popular fiction is composed of ancient myths newly reborn, telling and retelling a simple truth: ordinary people can do extraordinary things. Jack can plant a beanstalk that will provide endless food; a Tom Clancy character can successfully unravel a conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions. A knight can slay a dragon; a Stephen King character can defeat the massed forces of evil. Cinderella can attract the prince through her own innate decency rather than through family connections; a Nora Roberts heroine can, through her own strength, rise above a savagely unhappy past and bring happiness to herself and others.
    The next time you hear a work of popular fiction being scorned as foolish, formulaic, or badly written, ask yourself if it is truly badly written, foolish, and formulaic, or is it simply speaking to a transcendent tradition that emphasizes ancient hope rather than modernist despair?
    In our society, popular fiction is story after story told around urban campfires, stories which point out that life is not a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. There is more to life than defeat and despair. Life is full of possibilities. Victory is one of them. Joy is another.
    And that’s why people read popular fiction. To be reminded that life is worth the pain.
    —Elizabeth Lowell
    (This essay was originally published at www.elizabethlowell.com, a partner of www.writerspace.com.)

About the Author
    E LIZABETH L OWELL has over twenty million books in print. Her contemporary novels published by PerfectBound are: Desert Rain; To the Ends of the Earth; Remember Summer; Where the Heart Is. The Donovan novels— Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove, and Midnight in Ruby Bayou —were instant New York Times bestsellers. Classic contemporary romances by Ms. Lowell include: Forget Me Not, Lover in the Rough, A Woman Without Lies; Beautiful Dreamer; Eden Burning. PerfectBound also publishes Ms. Lowell’s romance-suspense novels Moving Target and Running Scared. Ms. Lowell lives in Seattle with her husband, with whom she writes mystery novels under a pseudonym.
    Please visit www.elizabethlowell.com.

Praise for Elizabeth Lowell
    “A LAW UNTO HERSELF IN THE WORLD OF ROMANCE”
    Amanda Quick
    “NO ONE CAN STIR THE PASSIONS, NO ONE CAN KEEP THE TENSION AT SUCH A SIZZLING HIGH, NO ONE CAN GIVE YOU MORE MEMORABLE CHARACTERS THAN ELIZABETH LOWELL.”
    Rendezvous
    “FOR SMOLDERING SENSUALITY AND EXCEPTIONAL STORYTELLING, ELIZABETH LOWELL IS INCOMPARABLE.”
    Romantic Times

Also by Elizabeth Lowell
    Amber Beach
    Autumn Lover
    Beautiful Dreamer
    Eden Burning
    Enchanted
    Forbidden
    Forget Me Not
    Jade Island
    Lover in the Rough
    Midnight in Ruby Bayou
    Moving Target
    Only His
    Only Love
    Only Mine
    Only You
    Pearl Cove
    Remember Summer
    Running Scared
    To the Ends of the Earth
    Untamed
    Where the Heart Is
    Winter Fire
    A Woman Without Lies
    This Time Love

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the