Friday, March 28, 2003
When I was a kid, and, for that matter, on into college, various people went to considerable trouble to impress upon me that when we choose to speak or write publically, we should, above all else, strive for clarity. Without clarity, we may as well keep our mouths shut. "What the hell's she on about now?" you may be asking yourself. Well, if you aren't, you should be. Clarity. That's what I'm on about. And how, at times, the web seems to have short circuited even the dullest comprehension of it. We have this fabulous unprecented tool, which potentially gives everyone on the planet A Voice. That's a wonder. But it's also a bit of a problem. At least here in America, we all like to talk, but few of us ever learn to speak clearly, and even fewer learn to translate that speech into written communication. To make things worse, most of us aren't so swift with reading comprehension, either.
Why does this come up now? A "review" on Amazon, of Wrong Things. The author of the review begins with praise for Poppy's "The Crystal Empire." Well, okay. That's cool. It's not terribly impressive or lucid praise, but it manages to communicate that the author likes the new direction that Poppy's writing has taken. Then the author moves along to "Onion" and writes:
"Onion" is actually the best CRK story I've read since reading "Souveniers" in The Dreaming series. However...she still needs work. I had to read and reread "Onion" to figure out just what was going on. It's better than Silk or Threshold, but not by much. Oh well.
Opinion is fine. The author doesn't care for my writing and seems to do a pretty good job of getting that across to us. Fine. That the story in question was chosen for Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and received an IHG for Best Short Fiction goes a long way towards innoculating me against negative criticism of it. I do question the author's confusion, as the story's narrative, though intentionally weird (in the literary sense), is perfectly straightforward. But, overall, the above is fine. It's the last paragraph (after a bit about "The Rest of the Wrong Thing") which is problematic:
All in all, a B+ effort from two great writers.
Okay. My prose "still needs work," neither of my novels are very good, "Onion" is confusing (not much better than the novels), but . . . I'm a "great" writer. And here we come to the problem. The contradiction that entirely ravels the "review." If the author is truly so unimpressed by my work, then "great" is hardly an applicable adjective. If the second paragraph is any indication, I'm hardly even mediocre. And I'm left with questions. Was she/he just trying to be nice? Is he/she completely unaware that there is a contradiction here? Mountains from molehills, I know. I know. But it bugs the hell out of me. If you're going to speak publically, or write publically, and put your name to it (as this author did, and she/he is to be commended for eschewing anonymity), please, please, a thousand times please, go to the lengths necessary to be coherent. It's annoying when you don't and only adds to the Great White Noise of the internet. Look back over what you've written. Make sure that if A = B, than B = A, that 1 + 2 doesn't end up equalling 14, and all that good shit. It's not hard. Some of us out here would appreciate such attention to (here's that word again) clarity.
Anyway, moving along, yesterday the required lie was not written. Instead, I entirely reorganized my office, three hours of taking books off shelves, moving shelves into new positions, and reshelving books. It needed to be done, and I was determined that I would do something of merit with the day. I also nailed a length of black velvet that Spooky had given me over the window (sunlight is just too distracting when I'm trying to work, and it fades books and such). It's a very tall window, and the velvet's about 3.5' x 8'. That's what I did yesterday. It left me sore and breathless, but was somewhat more satisfying than the lie will be. Of course, the lie still has to be told. Perhaps today.
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