{"id":1221,"date":"2011-03-10T11:55:04","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T11:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=1221"},"modified":"2015-05-09T19:07:50","modified_gmt":"2015-05-09T18:07:50","slug":"in-response-to-criticism-of-a-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=1221","title":{"rendered":"IN RESPONSE TO CRITICISM OF A REVIEW"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, if nothing else it\u2019s nice to see that I\u2019ve made it to the top of someone\u2019s list about something.<\/span> Scott Edelman is upset by my review of Lady Churchill\u2019s Rosebud Wristlet<\/em> at The Fix<\/em>. Thanks to Niall at Torque Control<\/span><\/a> for bringing this to my attention\u2026 I think.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see, where to start\u2026 First, to help out Mr Kaufmann in the comments, I didn\u2019t call LCRW<\/em> \u201cpretentious\u201d in my review in The Fix<\/span>, nor, to the best of my recall, did I use the word \u201cpretentious\u201d anywhere in the review \u2013 as he\u2019d see. if he bothered to read the review or, for that matter, bothered to read properly the quotation pulled from my review by Mr Edelman.<\/p>\n

I opened the article reflecting on the name of the magazine and said that the title suggested \u201cPretensions to literary stylings\u201d \u2013 here I use the word \u201cpretension\u201d in the sense of \u201caspiration\u201d \u2013 with none of the negative baggage Mr Kaufmann associate with the word \u201cpretentious\u201d. I apologise if I\u2019ve used a big, unfamiliar word, I hope his dictionary gets out from under the television soon.<\/p>\n

I opened the review by considering my reaction to the name of the magazine. Honestly, I could have been a lot harsher. I find it silly rather than whimsical \u2013 this may be a matter of taste, but it seems to me to smack of sixth-form pomposity \u2013 but more crucially, the title doesn\u2019t really reflect the content of the magazine. It has put me off buying the magazine in the past, and when presented with it for review, it put me off again.<\/p>\n

The opening two paragraphs discuss the type of thing I feared the magazine might contain given the title and gave the reader a clear indication of the reviewer\u2019s preferences. It seems fair that a review should set out a reviewer\u2019s expectations and prejudices, no?<\/p>\n

As I note in paragraph three, most of the content of this issue of LCRW<\/em> didn\u2019t live down to my concerns \u2013 the standard of story was generally very high. Although (sadly) Brian Conn\u2019s story came closest to bearing out my worst fears, being almost unreadable because the author (and the editors) seem to be too impressed by the cleverness of the writing and not interested enough in what the story actually says.<\/p>\n

Reading that opening section again, I agree it does sit a little awkwardly with the rest of the review \u2013 mostly, I think, because in editing down what was originally a much longer and meaner rant about the name I haven\u2019t continued to make it clear that I\u2019m considering the impact of the title on my expectations of what I was about to read.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless \u2013 I am happy to stand by the basic argument that writers who seek to communicate widely are preferable to those who use language to obfuscate.<\/p>\n

Scott Edelman then goes on to defend a group of writers he assumes need to be protected from philistines like me, which is very noble of him but a touch presumptuous. I happen to be a fan of both Le Guin and Wolfe \u2013 I\u2019ve read only bits of Disch and Delaney but liked what I read. Sadly I\u2019ve read nothing at all by Malzberg or Crowley, but perhaps I should take that as a recommendation to seek them out since I liked the others?<\/p>\n

Unlike Mr Edelman, I have read Finnegans Wake<\/em> (at least in the sense that I\u2019ve passed my eye over every word in sequence and attempted to parse meaning out of the phrases and sentences). Joyce is a hero of mine, a writer who opened my eyes up to what was possible with the English language when I studied him for A-Level and who has lived with me ever since. Indeed I even praise Joyce in this review, nominating The Dead\u201d as the greatest short story ever written in English as I point out that Matthew Cheney pinched the ending for his story, \u201cThe Lake.<\/p>\n

But I think Mr Edelman\u2019s being a little disingenuous when suggesting that Joyce didn\u2019t write Finnegans Wake<\/em> knowing that his style would exclude people from reading it. Joyce knew perfectly well what the reaction to the release of Wake<\/em> would be. That book was the most leaked pre-release item in the world before the invention of the Internet \u2013 there were at least two \u201cwork in progress\u201d volumes issued \u2013 and it had already cost him his friendship with people like Ezra Pound. Joyce\u2019s construction of the book is quite deliberately designed to be shocking, complex and to make reading the book very hard work (and therefore to exclude the majority of readers who cannot or will not put the effort to master this work).<\/p>\n

But as I say in my review, good writing is not limited just to one group of writers.<\/p>\n

Actually the kind of writers I was referring to were the targets of George Orwell in \u201cPolitics and the English Language\u201d (http:\/\/www.orwell.ru\/library\/essays\/politics\/english\/e_polit<\/a>) (which, while I\u2019m handing out accolades, I consider to be the greatest essay in the English language) \u2013 not good or even great writers who choose to challenge their readers but the over ambitious or the downright incompetent who attempt to use complexity in language to hide the incoherence of the babbling inside their skulls. These are not writers using complex words to convey complex ideas, no one could fairly accuse Joyce of not trying to communicate something to his readers, even if he did choose to do it an alien tongue, but writers using complex words to hide that they\u2019ve got not the slightest interesting or original idea in their head.<\/p>\n

Brian Conn\u2019s story teeters on the edge of that abyss. Any number of pretentious (now I\u2019ve used that word!) literary magazines (usually published by university presses) will be happy to supply Mr Edelman with a deluge of better examples of the kind of thing I\u2019m talking about. Other examples are common enough on the edges of genre publishing \u2013 there\u2019s a higher than average number amongst slipstream writers but also almost everything written by precocious teenagers, professors of sociology, bureaucrats, and almost every piece of fiction written in a \u201cpost-modern\u201d style that doesn\u2019t have the name Pynchon or Coupland on the cover.<\/p>\n

My first preference, I confess, is for writers (like Orwell or Graham Greene) who could write profound, intelligent, moving books (1984 <\/em>or The Power and the Glory<\/em>) using language that reaches out and embraces as many readers possible. I actually believe that such writing is far more demanding of the author than any other \u2013 indulging oneself in long words and longer paragraphs makes communicating complex ideas easier for the writer but harder for the reader (who has to possess greater intellectual capital to decode the writer\u2019s meaning). Delivering complexity in a format that all (or almost all) readers can absorb demands much greater rigour from an author. That\u2019s not to say I can\u2019t appreciate those writers who choose to use language in a more expansive way, but I set them higher standards \u2013 my bullshit detectors are tuned more finely, I expect them to justify the extra work they demand of me.<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, in all cases, Sturgeon\u2019s Law continues to apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, if nothing else it\u2019s nice to see that I\u2019ve made it to the top of someone\u2019s list about something. Scott Edelman is upset by my review of Lady Churchill\u2019s Rosebud Wristlet at The Fix. Thanks to Niall at Torque Control for bringing this to my attention\u2026 I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[20],"tags":[43,46],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-jH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1221"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2729,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1221\/revisions\/2729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}