review of Black Thorn, White Rose

[ellen_datlow]

Tehani Wessely of Australia reviews the new edition of Black Thorn, White Rose. She mostly likes the stories and overall gives the book a very good review, but this paragraph struck me:

"Fourteen years is a long time, and these stories first saw print in 1994. So much has changed in the world since then: the ways we perceive good and evil not the least, but also the things that have the power to shock us, to scare us, and to permit us to suspend our disbelief. Hence, there were stories in this anthology that felt old, dated, tired. It is possible to envisage them as fresh and groundbreaking when first published, but the intervening years, and many similar collections (including a number produced by the same editors, some of which I will review soon), have left this anthology feeling a little stale."

Dragonkat@LJ

Once I edit an anthology I rarely reread the stories in print. I've already read them a number of times during the editing process. So I'm not a good judge of this.

Is it true that an anthology series such as the adult fairy tale anthologies, all published in the mid-to late 90s can become dated? I'd think it would completely depend on each individual story. (this is for any fiction written after traumatic current events such as post Vietnam war, post 9/11, et al).

If the story is tied to a particular sensibility or for example, air travel is depicted more innocently than now in our time of terrorism fear does this necessarily date the story or merely make it a snapshot of time?

Because my head is a complete muddle of stuffiness and I'm feeling kind of wretched, I'm not sure if this makes sense, but I'd love some opinions.

Comments

[the-darkstar.livejournal.com]

I don't think they are old fashioned stories. Really. Thing is, the anthologie series fascinated me in a way that I "ebay'd" a missing edition just a year ago and I didn't have the feeling that the story is not longer up to date.

Truth be told, there are quite a few stories in it that I didn't like sooo much, but on the other hands, there are some that I still DO love. And BLACK THORN, WHITE ROSE was one of the anthology editions that did have GREAT stories, as - for example "Stronger than Time" (Wrede), "The Black Swan" (S. Wade" or "The Goose Girl" (Wynne-Jones).

I can re-read them and still love them.

And I am not saying that *just* because I am a fan.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Co-editing an anthology usually means that there are always a few stories going in that are a compromise: one editor loves it, the other doesn't but they agree to disagree and use the story anyway (unless there is exceptionally strong disagreement). I'm sure there are stories in all the books I've edited and co-edited that don't hold up for me.

Right now, I'm rereading lots of stories that I remember loving (horror stories) because of the 25 years of modern horror reprint anthology I'm editing...I'm finding that some of the stories I loved loved loved twenty years ago, do nothing for me. Others are still transgressive/shocking/disturbing/just plain readable.

[the-darkstar.livejournal.com]

Well, I tend to think that for every story there *can* be a right and a wrong time for reading, as for example: I tried to read a novel twice and throw it away because I didn't get "gripped" by it, and then, a few years later, I tried it a third time and just LOVED it.

Then again, I LOVED some novels back when I was a teenager. This is similar to what you said. I tried to read some of them as a grown-up (at least as grown-up as I am *g*) and some of them I still liked - others I just couldn't understand what I loved on them.

The story didn't change. But the reader did.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I agree. There are books I just loved as a child and young adult. I have no desire to reread them as I'm afraid that I won't enjoy them the way I did the first time around.

OTOH, I could never get through Sartre's nonfiction volume Being and Nothingness ;-)