Review of "Dislocations"
Jan. 3rd, 2008 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI suppose I have to believe them, but I'll never understand those people who say they don't read their own reviews. It's always interesting, at the very least it surely has to be interesting, to read someone else's take on your work.
Even where, or perhaps especially where, the reviewer's take is significantly at variance with your own, to the point where you want to clutch your head and cry "No, no, you have misread this entirely, how can you be so perverse...?"
It's salutary, is what it is. Words do different stuff in different people's heads; everyone reads a different story.
Or, in this case, a different anthology. Here's a review of 'Dislocations', where I really don't agree with him on much at all.
My own story, he's taken with the Big Idea and apparently disappointed in the characters, finding them bleak and their lives empty. Um. Not in my head, they're not; nor is the ending unclear, as he asserts. In my head. But that's the point: he hasn't missed the point, however much I want to shriek it at him. It's another reading, not a misreading. He's entitled.
Reluctantly.
ETA: you can of course read the story and decide for yourself; it's here, on the publisher's website. If you're a member of the BSFA, you can even nominate it for the short story award... (Hint!)
Even where, or perhaps especially where, the reviewer's take is significantly at variance with your own, to the point where you want to clutch your head and cry "No, no, you have misread this entirely, how can you be so perverse...?"
It's salutary, is what it is. Words do different stuff in different people's heads; everyone reads a different story.
Or, in this case, a different anthology. Here's a review of 'Dislocations', where I really don't agree with him on much at all.
My own story, he's taken with the Big Idea and apparently disappointed in the characters, finding them bleak and their lives empty. Um. Not in my head, they're not; nor is the ending unclear, as he asserts. In my head. But that's the point: he hasn't missed the point, however much I want to shriek it at him. It's another reading, not a misreading. He's entitled.
Reluctantly.
ETA: you can of course read the story and decide for yourself; it's here, on the publisher's website. If you're a member of the BSFA, you can even nominate it for the short story award... (Hint!)
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 01:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 01:57 am (UTC)If the universe looks kindly upon you, it should bring you a nomination.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 03:21 am (UTC)Sure, we all have our opinions. But opinions can be unsupportable. Wrongheaded. Confuzzled. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 10:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 02:20 pm (UTC)I also wished it to you on Ink in My Coffee.
Yeah, I read reviews, although I often think, "What story did HE read? That wasn't MINE." Different frames of reference and all that stuff.
Your work also requires the reader to engage fully, letting down all defenses, and experience the work. I find, more and more, that a lot of people want to keep that distance -- they don't want anything that makes them feel too uncomfortable or look at their own viewpoints too closely. Fortunately, there are still plenty who do, and who connect to the work, but a lot don't.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 02:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 02:45 pm (UTC)off topic but
Date: 2008-01-04 02:52 pm (UTC):-)