decaller

This book was a great idea in theory. The theory: Bring together stories from around the world by rarely translated international voices. Publish it in an anthology. Sell it. The reality: The stories didn't bother me so much as the editorial choices. First, the stories weren't short stories. They were excerpts from longer works of fiction, which means you never really finished a story. You just get to taste it, barely. I barely got a whiff of the author's voice, style and story before the excerpt was done. Sure, each opened with a preface from the editors, but that was also problematic. Each excerpt needed to be contextualized. The editors had to "tell" everything rather than let the creative piece stand on its own because it couldn't! Oh better metaphor! This anthology was like a catalog. So I didn't even finish the anthology because what was the point? It was incomplete to begin with. On a bright note, I did buy it at a neat literary festival in San Francisco. Support local literary events people! They lead you to interesting things, even if you don't care much for them in the end.

2022-10-03 13:27