I Have Decided That…
Jeff VanderMeer • June 1st, 2008 @ 5:03 pm • Uncategorized
this guy is incompatible with both my b.s. detector and my English editor.
(Note: he’s not a native English speaker. Well, then, some responsibility lies on the people who use him to provide editing. This doesn’t excuse his inability to engage the material properly, though.)
June 1, 2008 at 7:07 pm
That was an understatement. 1-2 sentence paragraphs that state basically “I liked this one” and little else? Stating that the anthology didn’t work for him and spending most of the space talking about the near-half that he liked and nothing about what failed to engage him? I don’t know if I read the same anthology that he did.
June 1, 2008 at 7:42 pm
I thought exactly the same thing when I read the review last night. What got me was how a ‘bizarre and quirky’ story is inherently not a well-written or engaging one. This anthology has been on my must-buy list for a while, since city-based fantasy is at the heart of my Honours thesis.
June 1, 2008 at 7:44 pm
I mean, in my own review of the antho, I pointed out a few weaker stories as well, although I gave it a positive review. But that’s not why this guy is on my do-not-read list now. It’s what both of you have mentioned. It’s just…eeeeh.
Jeff
June 1, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Jesus H. Christ. The guy didn´t even write a review – it´s a DVD back cover, as I use to say to some of my students who fail to write a good outline in the Creative Writing classes.
Just wait for my review in PWT next weekend. THIS non-native English speaker will give him (figuratively, or course) the proverbial kick-in-the-pants.
June 1, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Fabio–you always provide good analysis, and your English is better than mine, although that may not be saying much. I’m much better in squid-language.
I didn’t even know that English was a second language for him until someone pointed it out. Maybe it does suck he can’t post in Italian and expect us all to understand him, but would the results be all that different?
June 1, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Having glanced at his other reviews there, I have to say it’s a combination of him half-assing that review (not that I’m blameless in that regard elsewhere) and failing to ask deep enough questions. It seems his English is at least the level of the “average” teenager writing that required book report, with as much original insight.
June 2, 2008 at 1:35 am
Just as a note: I am familiar with Guslandi, and in fact his real interest is in horror. I thought he only reviewed horror. So, probably part of it is that he really wasn’t in his genre.
As far as “quality” goes, it seems at about the same standard as the other stuff on SF Site.
June 2, 2008 at 5:29 am
I published quite a few of Mario’s reviews in Emerald City, most of them on horror anthologies and collections. English isn’t his first language, and I took the view that if someone was kind enough to try to write reviews for me in a language other than their own then the least I could do was help out by editing thoroughly (and then get Anne to fix my poor editing).
As regards the overall structure, I note that reviewing anthologies is a difficult business that I tended to avoid where possible. Either you end up talking in great detail about only a few stories, or you skimp on all of them, or you go way too long. Obviously all of us can improve the quality of what we write, but Mario is one of the few people I could find actually willing to review short fiction on a regular basis. I’m not surprised that he gets asked to look at books he may not get on well with.