You want to get the chips, I'm about to shoot?

[faustus]

I wrote some while back about a book I'm reviewing (note that's friends locked) - and I read a few more chapters tonight between coffee with brisingamen and the start of Brideshead Revisited (of which more later) and then after In Bruges waiting for the bus (ditto).

I've been told to write a review to a length which suits its importance.


Avoid


I'm guessing more will be needed? You never know, it might get better (and the last chapter, mostly on William Burroughs is more than adequate). But - given the subject - I looked up Dick and Bester in the index. Nada. Ditto for Delany - but then he's spelt Delaney (and note the use of LeGuin which is a step above Leguin I suppose).

Two sentences in particular had me head scratching.

"Aldiss sees [More, Swift, Defoe, and Verne] as uncles to Shelley."

"During the 1960s and 1970s, linguists such [sic] de Saussure (1959), Austin (1962), Halliday (1964), Labov (1966), Searle (1969), and Ohmann (1971) exploited their knowledge of the constituent parts of language as tools in exploring different ways to analyze literary texts." [see the header here for the second huh?]


And does K. Amis really fit in a list of non-academic critics? New Maps of Hell was delivered at sodding Princeton.

Unfortunately, I suspect this chapter is written by a grad student. I'm not sure how honest I should be.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Your reviewing a text, not the people. And surely the only thing you can do is be completely honest?

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I do agree but - I remember a graduate seminar from about 2002 where the audience (including one of the deliverer's supervisors) were excessively candid about the student's use of Lacan. It took a long time to then persuade a smart postgrad not to drop out all together - and he's not touched Lacan since. I think he over reacted - but I also think the cut and thrust got too thrusting when we owed him a duty of care.

Put another way, how would you like to be on the receiving end? The chapter really is bad, from a bunch of bad chapters.


Editors should be there to protect writers from themselves - I don't think that here (where they each have two chapters in addition to prelims and appendices) the editors have done their job.

It's finding a way of being completely honest and constructive - there's a germ of a good idea after five pages that could be cut without loss - without just saying, "And here's a wrong headed statement and here's a self-evident mistake and why are there only electronic citations when a small forest has been cleared to make way for the secondary work on the topic?" and sticking the boot in.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

*winces at own early-morning typo*

I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end. It would probably make me cry. And I remember seeing a postgrad harshly criticised at a conference, where there could have been a much more gentle approach adopted. On the other hand, when I wrote something for publication that was then rejected (and rightly so) I got angry and wrote a much better article as a result.

But I don't think that, as a reviewer, your responsibility is to the author. It's to the potential purchasers/readers and to...I don't know...the discourse?

Not that I envy you, of course.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Early morning typos - typos in general - are inevitable in writing about someone else's typos.

What strikes me is how rarely we are rude - there was a presentation the other day which was frankly shit and which should have been taken apart if it wasn't for the context being one of honouring someone. But a grad student steps out of line and suddenly we're a 1940s Latin master ripping the piss out of someone for confusing the sublatives.

Or maybe I'm being unnecessarily defensive a) coming out of a bad profreading experience on the Pratchett book and b) I am proofing a copy edit and I have found several potential motes and beams.

I'm promise not to take this exchange as carte blanche for radical sincerity the next time I review you...

(What was Lenin's line: "A discourse is a weapon with a worker at each end"? Some has been lost in translation I fear)

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping you can be honest without being rude or bitchy.

You're going to have to wait a fair while, I reckon, before you get the chance to be mean about my work. Also, I chose my supervisor (and probably my subject) in the full knowledge that I'll have to grow a pretty thick skin to deal with any responses I do receive.

[jkneale.livejournal.com]

Trotsky, shirley?

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Google suggested that it was by Anon, who gets almost as many good lines as Ibid.