When I make comments like the following, I generally try to be vague, because I don’t like shitting on my fellow writers.

I have recently received a career-retrospective collection of short stories from an award-winning writer previously unknown to me.

Last night I did a hop around the collection.

More than just “not my cup of tea.”

Absolutely awful, on a line-by-line basis. The descriptions overwhelm the actions, the characterizations are schematic, and the stories are exercises in fantastic stuff happening without that fantastic stuff illuminating anything about our world or about our species (in even the way that a throwaway potboiler should).

The award-winning story is particularly terrible. It is an exercise in a character wandering into a fantastic event, experiencing it, and after some struggles wandering out, via a process best described as authorial fiat (“I reached the minimum wordcount! Yay!”), with — this is crucial — after that, no particular trauma or epiphanies or growth. I can’t actually tell you what’s terrible about the apocalyptic things that happen in the interim, not without specifying and going on to clarify how they fail to reach the impact of the events in the stories that are superficially like it — and that will tell you who this guy is — but suffice it to say that when the masters do stories like this, it matters more; it feels more real; it leaves more of a lingering aftertaste.

As a reader, I am angry about having my time wasted, and not at all interested in moving on to more of this individual’s work.

As a reviewer, as someone who shares his opinions with you fine folks for free, I really want to go story by story through this collection of work by this guy who really has received significant acclaim, and chop it to pieces. The urge to name him, now, is powerful.

You know what?

I also cannot stomach being the guy who would do that.

This is not vague-booking. You are not supposed to guess. This is the experience being written about, not the author. The author simply sinks beneath my radar. He has a following and he is welcome to it. It just won’t include me, unless — as might happen — I encounter a story of his in some anthology, read it without paying attention to the byline, and am completely blown away.

Instead, I’ll just move on to other investigations.

| Category Books, Horror, Life Wisdom