After reading Watching Civility Devolve in which the editor of Fence spars with a contributor over a missing copy of the journal and ends up in a playground dispute, I had all sorts of feelings raised about submitting to literary journals as a writer. And, over and above the feelings it stirred up in me, I kept wondering why the editor would want to share this email correspondence on their web site. It didn’t leave me with a positive impression of the journal. Was it supposed to be clever? to show the asinity of the contributors? to show the day to day grind of editing a literary journal? I’m sympathetic to all that as I worked on a literary journal and work as an editor, but reading the email exchange leaves me with a rancid taste in my mouth.
Then today I read the Virginia Quarterly Review’s comments that readers of submissions have made. Keep in mind that these “readers” are not readers of the journal, but readers of submissions to the journal that rate and review them in some fashion before they are mostly rejected. Is the airing of this to show how bad most writers are? how cliched? how clever the readers are? Because I’m left with the impression that the readers are mostly interested in impressing each other with their descriptions of terrible writing. Again, I’m left feeling like I ate something spoiled.
It would seem to me that when we operate in the gift economy (that is opposed to the corporate economy), where art is essentially a gift, and offered for (mostly) free, the art could be treated with respect regardless of whether or not one likes it.
April 30th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Respect seems to be seriously lacking in many aspects of modern society. I see it in everything from all the mean and horrible things that are posted on the web to the folks who speed in neighborhoods and complain when the cops stop them for it.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
None of the above. As I specifically and pointedly noted in the blog entry:
Of course, our readers have written thousands of reviews that are in-depth, reasoned, considerate, and polite. But they aren’t funny, so you won’t read them here.
That being precisely the opposite of what you suggested. In fact, the “airing” of it is to give you an opportunity to laugh at funny people saying funny things, and perhaps inform you as to what might constitute a really inappropriate submission topic. It’s a fact: “Planet of the Apes” fan fiction is a demonstrably hilarious thing to submit to a literary magazine…unless you’re a PotA slash fiction author.
Actually, our readers don’t see one another’s comments. Their comments on particularly bad submissions are really more like shouting into a void, because it’s not like anybody here would ever need to read them.
Aren’t you taking the whole thing in fairly bad faith? Why not accuse Brian Satterfield of being “mostly interested in impressing people with his descriptions of signs of impending layoffs?” After all, isn’t he “airing this to show how bad most companies are?” Or isn’t it possible that he, too, is trying to inform and amuse?
As I wrote in the linked blog entry, 4.6% of submissions to VQR are gallingly inappropriate for VQR. If somebody’s not even going to take the time to look at a single issue of VQR (free! online!) in order to determine that we’re not going to publish their 80 page master’s thesis on Kant, I think we get to have a public giggle at their (anonymized) expense.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Yes, I read your original post. I still consider what you think is funny to be unkind. All literary journals receive submissions that are inappropriate. We move on.
May 1st, 2008 at 7:10 am
Well, then I guess we’ll just disagree to disagree.
Thanks for fixing my blockquote!
May 1st, 2008 at 10:39 am
We can definitely agree to disagree. I will say it’s very thought-provoking at the larger ethical level, and no problem with the html cx.
May 1st, 2008 at 11:33 am
I don’t know what brain misfunction caused me to write “disagree to disagree,” but thank you for understanding that I didn’t mean what I wrote. “Disagreeing to disagree” seems at first blush like being really rude but, now that I think about it, I suspect it would be when two people cannot agree on the fact that they are, in fact, in disagreement. Which I’ve actually encountered.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I take no issue with what was written, lord knows I would write the same thing (no “probably” about it…) But then again I’ve never tried to get anything published, but if I did I would hate to see that written about anything I wrote.
I think I’ll take the zero on the whole thing.
May 1st, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I’m working on a follow-up post, which I may or may not post, but I think that it brings up issues of power and shaming and the golden rule.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:47 am
As someone who has written slash fiction before, though admittedly not Planet-of-the-Apes slash fiction, I have to say that submitting your PotA slash to a literary journal is pretty hilarious. My slash isn’t even associated with my name or my easily-googleable handle. I submit it to a corner of the internet where it is appreciated, and nowhere else. Most of the other slash writers I know are genre savvy enough that I suspect the PotA fiction’s submission was a prank.
IMHO, the post is similar to the folks at my firm making fun of ass disfigurement claims. On the one hand, somebody was hurt or their ass wouldn’t be disfigured and that really shouldn’t be funny. On the other hand, it usually ends up with at least two very expensive attorneys and a judge having to do a viewing of some guy’s butt and then arguing about to what degree it is disfigured.
Now admittedly, we don’t ever do that in front of the person attached to said ass. Still, seems pretty harmless to me.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:55 am
I’m all right as the minority opinion here, but I think that it’s precisely the difference between internal discussions of someone’s ass or writing and external viewing of that discussion that is the difference here. And, if it were your writing (setting the fan fiction aside, let’s say it’s just a prose poem), it doesn’t feel good to have it publically described. Now, after following this for a while, I think Waldo mentioned at some point that all identifying details were changed, which makes it much more like satire than actual quotes of real work and actual internal communications.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Makes sense.