ellen_datlow | Review of YBFH#20

A review by Paul Kincaid:
Sfsite

I rarely argue with reviews. When I have on one or two occasions is correct a review, which I will do here--this is what Kincaid says:

"Just about all of them pay reverence to the ghost stories of the past, perhaps most blatantly in Gene Wolfe's "Sob in the Silence," a nasty but inconsequential tale that, I suspect, would not have been included here if it didn't have Wolfe's name attached to it."

I object to this most strenuously.

Perhaps Kincaid didn't care for the Wolfe story, but I found it creepy and scary. I don't know what what he means by "inconsequential" --perhaps it's not a socially instructive moral tale such as Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Daughter (a Fantasy)" which Kincaid considers the best story in the book. But IT DOES WHAT IT IS MEANT TO DO.

However, that is not what annoys me. What I do object to (and I hope someone sends him over here to read this) is the idea that I included the story because of the presumed marketability of Gene Wolfe's name. Sorry, but that's not how I edit YBFH.

I have NEVER taken a story for YBFH for the name value. I've NOT taken plenty of stories by writers whose names have a much greater impact on the marketing of a book than Wolfe's.

I have no interest in responding to the rest of the review but to say that Kincaid seems not to understand horror vs fantasy. Horror is usually better served in traditional forms/structures --which isn't to say that occasional experimentation isn't sometimes effective in evoking horror. But I'd say that too much structural fooling around can dissipate the mood.
Comments most welcome.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thank you for your comments on the review. I did not intend that it should cause offence, and I apologise if it did. But I stand by what I said about the Wolfe story. Yes horror, and particularly the ghost story, tend to rely on traditional forms. This can be very effective, as I pointed out with the Christopher Harman story. But I did not feel it was at all effective in the Wolfe. It was very knowingly using our expectations of the form, but not, I felt, to any surprising, original or moving end. I found the story neither creepy nor scary, and I say this as a great fan of Wolfe's work and someone who has written quite extensively on it, so I was predisposed to like the story. Given that it was, to my mind, a very ordinary story from an extraordinary writer, I had to wonder whether the name played any part in your selecting it. I am delighted to accept your assurance that that is not the case.

And in an aside to [Bad username or site: nihilistic kid @ livejournal.com], I'm not sure what ad hominem insults add to this discussion.

Paul Kincaid

Paul,
And thank you for coming by. Strong opinions about published stories are what makes the literary world go round.

Thank you for your apology regarding my reasons for reprinting it.

And in an aside to [Bad username: nihilistic kid], I'm not sure what ad hominem insults add to this discussion.

An interesting position, given that the objection to the review is based on your ad hominem attack on Ellen Datlow. You specifically malign her as choosing material in bad faith, which is an attack on her character -- an attack you present instead of presenting an actual argument about the Wolfe story, which you instead just dismiss in a phrase.

As far as my comments, I made no remarks about your character; I simply pointed out that you are not a reviewer of reputation, and you indeed are not.

Oh, go on then, I'll bite: what's your definition of "reviewer of reputation", such that someone who's reviewed for the TLS, New Scientist, Interzone and NYRSF, won the Thomas D Clareson Award for services to sf, and been a guest of honour at both fan conventions and academic conferences, doesn't meet it?

I mean, if it's "not as well known as "Michiko Kakutani", fair enough; you're obviously right, but equally as obviously not saying anything useful.

Interzone and NYRSF are exceedingly minor venues, especially the latter. TLS and New Scientist are somewhat more interesting (especially the former), but then again I doubt that the reviews there contain the sort of fannish handicapping being criticized here. The SFRA itself is an exceedingly minor organization — I've worked with a recent co-chair of their annual conference in grad school, and have seen the sausage being made -- and cons hardly count either.

It's worth noting that under your framework, both Darrell Schweizter and I both count as reviewers of reputation. Schweitzer has reviewed in the Washington Post and I in the Village Voice and Spex (a major German pop culture magazine), and in Weird Tales, NYRSF, we've have been GoHs, etc. In fact, it would be fairly difficult to find a reviewer who published at all outside of fanzines who would not meet your criteria. It's not hard to place reviews in newspapers and popular magazines and certainly not at all hard to place reviews in SF magazines.

At any rate, your whole framework is wrong to begin with — a reviewer of reputation is one whose reviews are actively sought out by excellent readers and whose reviews also have an impact on general readers through a trickle-down effect, and whose reviews and criticism are insightful and/or challenging enough in turn inform other critical opinion.

peake does not rate.

That he cannot even properly identify an ad hominem attack when he makes one, and can only misidentify a comment about reputation as an attack on character is just icing on the cake as far as reputational analysis goes. If someone can be so tone-deaf as to think claiming that an editor is just buying stories for a best-of annual on a name basis is NOT as ad hominem, while also complaining that any analysis of his reputation in the field that doesn't suit him IS ad hominem — then it hardly matters what his reputation might be, as this would be prima facie evidence that the field itself is in disrepair and disrepute.

Well, thanks for explaining yourself. For the record, I disagree with the majority of your assertions,

peake easily meets two of your three criteria, and I think the third criterion is basically unprovable and so not useful. But I don't imagine further discussion would be productive, so I'll bow out now.

Bow out as you like, but your assertion that my third criterion — reviews and criticism are insightful and/or challenging enough in turn inform other critical opinion — is unprovable is downright bizarre. Were I in a

peakeean mode, I might even suggest some malevolent trickery is afoot without evidence.

Critical influence is actually the most easily operational and provable of the critera. It is fairly easy, for example, to show that Joshi's consideration of Lovecraft as a materialist informed later Lovecraft criticism and reviews of that author's work, most simply because Joshi's idea is widely cited in subsequent reviews. Measuring citations or the number of critics addressing some concept — say, a panel about Clute's "Real Year" at Wiscon or a panel on his idea of "Vastation" at Readercon — is much easier than determining whether or not people seek out particular critical opinions in their own home, and is really day-one minute-one of any sort of real reputation study.

It is amazing that you actually think it is easier to determine private reader behavior than it is public critical behavior.

Ah, sorry, I was imprecise: the two the

peake meets are influence on other critics and being sought out by excellent readers; the one that's unprovable is influence on general readers through trickle-down.

Okay, that is a bit firmer, though it isn't necessarily all that hard to prove that general readers can be influenced by some critic, especially once that critic has influenced other critics. If no critics are hitting general readerrs, then criticism (and critical reputation) hardly matters.

Review of YBFH#20

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