beginning Interfictions
Interfictions gave me high hopes, because Small Beer Press had yet to disappoint me, but i'm annoyed. A couple of the stories so far are quite solid, making me curious about the other work of certain authors, but some of them... some of them are true clunkers. One of them actually enraged me with its inept rehash of stringing together New Age cliches. The original intent of this post was to launch into a lengthy diatribe on how much i loathe this person's writing, but once i found the person online, the venom left me.
The story is still awful though.
In the future, i'll probably steer far, far away from anything with this "interstitial art" label. The Wikipedia entry is craptastic, as it has the same insecure preening that flavors some of Interfictions. Books like Magic for Beginners, Cold Skin, Shriek, When They Came... these escape the fantasy ghetto for me, and demand some consideration other than the pulp that they are lumped in with. Writers who are looking for a boost to cross-market their books, to become the next Laurell K. Hamilton are hacks who are looking for new ways to market themselves into different areas of the bookstore. Interfictions is giving me this impression.
Ach. Some of these people in Interfictions are exactly why i loathed anything connected to fairy tales for decades. Fairy tales are simply not interesting when they are mere wish fulfillment. Italo Calvino's Italian Folk Tales captures this far better, demonstrating how weird and capricious the stories people tell their children. I tricked myself into believing that more people grasped how creepy the human subconscious is revealed to be in these stories. Nope.
I'll still finish the remainder.
3 comments:
Aw, come on! Which story was it that pissed you off? Was it mine? If it was, I hereby give you carte blanche to fulminate against me to your heart's content. I can take it! In fact, the worst that could happen is I learn to be a better writer for it.
Then again, if it wasn't me, you're probably wise to keep quiet. But you could at least tell us which of the stories you didn't hate!
I mean look--nobody in this anthology wrote what they wrote in some misguided attempt to become Laurell K. Hamilton. Most of us didn't even write them with the idea of being 'interstitial'. If you don't like the stories, that's one thing. But if it's just the packaging you object to, that's something else.
I can honestly say it wasn't yours, although i cannot say offhand if i have figured out which one is yours yet. (I'm at work, and don't have the book on me.) Another one that bugged me actually has some great writing in it, but the explanation of author's intent tagged on the end of it left me cold.
It's obvious in the stories that i've read that they were not designed to be part of some movement, but gathered under that aegis. The introduction even left me open to the label. However, that one story curdled everything. I might have to read the other stories again just to get the tepid cliches out my head. The author seems to be a very decent, warm person, and probably doesn't deserve the ire of some knee-jerking blogger.
I'll definitely make another post on Interfictions.
Was having problems with the filters at work. Found your real blog. It's
I'm not going to read any more of it than i have to, as i don't want to spoil the other stories yet, but it seems that you don't care for the story either, and don't consider even it to be interstitial either.
Yeah. "Black Feather." Loathed it. That's why i focused on interstitial as marketing, as i didn't find the race argument remotely convincing. It's obviously a straight fantasy story, one that i wouldn't find appealing in any circumstances.
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