ellen_datlow | review of Black Thorn, White Rose

review of Black Thorn, White Rose

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.

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Not for me they haven't.

But I love the OLD, original fairy tales, before they were disney-fied, before they were seetened up for children. The original ones that WERE written for adults.

so for me, they will never become tired, old or stale.

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?

I think they're both ways of saying the same thing, and that one is more polite than the other. The pieces that get the "snapshot of time" designation are the ones people will be reading some time into the future, and looking at those dated elements and seeing them as unique, windows into a time long past.

I think the film "Dog Day Afternoon" is a pretty good example of that: a snapshot of time from the seventies. That movie certainly wouldn't have been made today.

In other words, a snapshot into time gives us insight into an era while still being a story that speaks to you, rather than having the artifacts of that time make the tale incomprehensible to contemporary sensibilities.

'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?'
of course.
in this particular case, i can see how one or two of the stories might be (i'm thinking specifically of the beckett and cole stories), but i think that reviewer is rather overstating the case and that the bulk of the book has aged quite well.
i also very much disagree that the social perception of 'good' and 'evil' has changed markedly over the past fourteen years and am a bit puzzled by that statement.

It's possible that the concept of dated is not so much about setting, but about the tone and feel of the story.

Urban fantasy before Buffy, for instance, might be considered dated by current readers who began reading after the post-buffy UF snark and wit became almost imbedded.

This is like saying mythology in general is dated.

I think not. Fairy tales and myths inform readers of human psychological dynamics through use of metaphor. History itself is just that: history. But describing social evolution through the art forms will never be passe.

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.

Tropes can become dated, especially if over-used. I don't think the stories themselves become dated, unless content was always "better" than execution. (I do, however, agree that certain stories become so closely identified with/inseparable from the time-period during which they were written that they are best enjoyed and assessed within the context of being historical artifacts...a lot of stuff from the 1920s and '30s, for example (Lovecraft, etc.) is really difficult to see as not being inherently racist, unless you allow yourself to go: "Yeah, but that's how some people thought, which doesn't make it right, just so...okay, on with the story."

I tend to be rather dubious of any claim that a story is "dated". I mean, I suppose it's possible, but it's difficult for me to conceive of. After all, ideas about morality and what is frightening and such have changed quite a bit more since the original fairy tales were written than they have in the past 12 years, and the world is still plenty interested in them.

Stories don't have to fit the world as it is right now, I think. Part of the importance of stories is capturing what's important to people - and what's important to people tends to change only slightly, and the small ways in which it has changed, well, part of the importance of stories is keeping a record of that, too.

I say, "snapshots in time".

I originally bought your anthologies in the 1980's and when I re-read them, I simply enjoy the stories. I don't try to squeeze them into a 21st century sensibility. The same with any classic authors I read, Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury.

Sure a story can become dated. Sixth Sense was apparently (I wasn't surprised by it) a stunning story. It's essentially just a last minute reveal story, same as "OMG this guy is really a vampire/the serial killer everyone's been looking for all story". It was an interesting and slight new twist on the story. But now days how many guidelines say they don't want a story like that, which of course means they see enough of them to mention it. Something shiny and new 14 years ago can get old as more people emulate or borrow from it. But that still, in my book, doesn't make a story stale. I can enjoy dated stories despite that.

I still love Dangerous Visions and it's tame by contemporary standards.

That paragraph strikes me as the equivalent of making conversation about the weather while thinking of something meaningful to say.

As you said, in something like an anthology, it's more likely the individual stories themselves that might possibly become dated.

However, it also depends on the theme of the anthology. Like if you were going to make a 9/11-inspired anthology, it'd probably become dated 40 years from now.

My caveat of course is also what the story is attempting. For me, when I read Black Thorn, White Rose, I found it still quite an impressive read, mainly because the stories were well-written so much so that they stand well on their own and aren't like some stories which only rely on delivering a punch line (whether it's to horrify or to make readers laugh for example). Or a better an analogy might be something like Gulliver's Travels wherein the political satire might be lost to modern readers, but because it was written in such a way that it's still a good story despite the satire.

But then again, there are also times that because of a work's popularity, they themselves do get outdated. Like E.E. Docsmith pioneered many space opera elements that if you read his work nowadays, it'll sound cliche. Unless of course as a reader, that's the first space opera work you've read.

And then there's expectations. When you mentioned "adult fairy tales", what was the reader expecting? Did it mean well-crafted stories that goes beyond the didactic flow of today's stories? Or perhaps something more sexual, more taboo? I suspect the reviewer was expecting more of the latter in this case and so there's a different way in which the book was approached.

"The end result is that this anthology performs the rather dubious task of removing fairy tales from the nursery and putting them in the adult novelty store instead."

Ironically, fairy tales were not generally intended to calm children, but often to terrorize them. Snow White's stepmother being made to dance in red hot iron boots until she died, for example.

When I read this anthology, I looked for the stories to feel dated. It seemed as if they should and I thought they would because they *were* older, but they didn't, not at all. I think that if their copyright dates were changed to 2008, Ms. Wessely would not have guessd these were published fourteen years ago.

Wow, it's great that a review of mine has provoked such discussion. I don't intend to defend my review in any way, just as I'm certain Ellen doesn't need to defend what is still a great read, but I do want to make one point. When I said "there were stories in this anthology that felt old, dated, tired", this was my way of saying I think I would have read these stories differently fourteen years ago.

I read fantasy extensively, in the short and long form, and am perhaps overfond of fairy tale retellings. If I had read this book fourteen years ago, my palate for such tales would not have been as (for want of a better word) jaded. I would not have experienced so many and varied retellings of the stories as have been produced over the years, and would not have had the same feeling about the book.

As I said, "It is possible to envisage them as fresh and groundbreaking when first published", because Ellen and Terri would have ensured that they were. However, over fourteen years of publishing, others have done and redone - in myriad forms - similar tales, so it is harder feel the freshness in the collection from such a distance.

I did enjoy reading the anthology, as I have enjoyed others in the series. I recently picked up "Swan Sister" and devoured it. I now have "A Wolf at the Door" in my 'to read' pile, because I believe in the editorial credibility inherent in the anthologies. And I certainly respect the right of others to read the anthology in a different way, and NOT see it the way I did. As with any review, it is only a reflection of the tastes and background of the person reading it. I always try to see the book from a broad perspective and not completely from my own point of view, but essentially, all reviews are written from one person's experiences. So that was mine, with "Black Thorn, White Rose". I enjoyed it, I had no problems READING it, I just found reviewing it more difficult because I could see the intervening years.

Thanks Ellen for inviting me to comment here, and for permitting me to read the collection in the first place!

Hmm...I don't know about these stories, not having read them, but...I mean, I read stuff that is clearly dated and still enjoy it - as a reader, I'm aware of what the world was like when the story was written, and/or the writer gives me enough sense of it that I don't sit around going, "But that's not how it is right now!"

I think the only time something might seem dated to me would be if I'm reading a book written in, say, 1990, predicting what things were going to be like in 2000, and they got it all wrong or made it way too futuristic or whatever. So books that predict a future that has now passed might bring out that feeling a bit. Even so, it's fun to read them and see what people thought would happen.

If it's true that "the ways we perceive good and evil" have changed radically in the past 14 years, then authors like Shakespeare, Dostoevski, and Hawthorne must feel VERY "old, dated, tired" to Tehani Wessely, who sounds to me like a youngster stretching to give an impression of profundity.

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review of Black Thorn, White Rose