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Bad Reviews of your Work/Art?

18:23 / 27.08.02

A comment by Sean Mcglinchy in the Cyberpunk thread took me by surprise - I assumed all the artistic types here had had write ups of one kind or another. I've had some good ones, but that's not the purpose of this thread; I want to hear the bad ones, the funny ones, the ones that had you tieing the noose and writing the suicide note.

For instance, the first story of mine ever published in a 'proper' sci-fi mag many years ago caused quite a stir. It was reviewed in Interzone, and I thought my 'career' was finished when the reviewer alternated between patronising me and describing me as a Myra Hindley type character, saying I deserved a visit from a lynch mob. Luckily I saw the funny side.

Well, no I didn't actually. It was horrible. Nothing like the only review I ever saw of the single my band released. A badly recorded, out of tune, appallingly sung love song, that was described by an anarcho fanzine as 'beautiful'. How we laughed etc.

So, please, set out your public humiliation here. And let me know if it was character building.

18:37 / 27.08.02

I only show the photos I know people will like, the easy ones with loveable subjects (kittens, kittens, kittens). the ones I actually work on and mean, I keep to myself

you are much braver than I am

21:22 / 27.08.02

A punk zine, called Underpop, over in the UK, heard of our band, which has "underpop" in the name. They like punk. Here is their review:

---------------------
The Shimmer Kids
'Strange Signals'

The Shimmer Kids, whose Underpop association we inadvertantly share monikers with, plough a furrow seemingly out of pace with modern music. 'Strange Signals' is a jumpy, melodic acoustic track that lands their music referance point somewhere around the late-60s, coming on like one of the bands that followed the Beatles' rebirth as psychedelic freaks. Their love for The Beatles is almost suffocating, especially the vocalist's passable Paul McCartney impression. It's as iff the last 30 years never happened, it's pleasent but completely irrevelant and nothing I would usually bother with, maybe my mum would like it. (A)
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His MUM! Ouch.

23:01 / 27.08.02

Gad. It's not the REVIEWS that horrify me. It's the responses I get from Lucky Potential Publishers, who find my stories "compelling" but usually not well behaved enough.

For example.

One smut magazine made me change the title of my story from "Stay Away from the Kids" to "Stay Away."

The entire point of "Stay Away from the Kids" was to suggest, but never say, that the characters were underage -- and to subtly implicate the readers as they are seduced by the suggestion. The publisher got it just enough to get nervous. So they also asked me to change the wording of a few paragraphs and then ran it with a disclaimer.

The really hilarious part of all this was that there was so much more in that story that they did NOT make me change which was much more suggestive of what was scaring them.

SIGH.

03:37 / 28.08.02

my band got a mediocre review in the Wire a couple years ago... i remember a part where the savage pencil said we "had turned our bleary eyes towards crowley" which was pretty accurate anfd funny... not really slammed the album or anything, but he wasn't gushing either. i got the sense that he didn't listen past the first track, actually.

11:02 / 28.08.02

Took part in a play last year that (in a particularly slow week) garnered a 'critic's choice' from Time Out. All well and good until we read the review. He liked almost everything in the piece - except me. In point of fact, my one pivotal plot moment was described as "shameful" and "introducing an unwanted moment of base comedy".

I think it's the review I am most proud of.

11:08 / 28.08.02

I hate Time Out so much I think a bad review in it should be considered the same as a good one anywhere else!

11:58 / 28.08.02

Oh, Jack S, I’m with you on rejection letters etc.
Think my favourite one I’ve had was from a literary agent who thanked me for sending the synopsis of my novel, but said that, having read it, they didn’t feel it was for them. Fair enough, except that I’d only sent a prelim letter asking if they were after clients at the moment (for the record, this was Helen Fielding’s agent, and this level of paying attention certainly explains how the second Bridget Jones book made it under the lameness radar. But I digress).

As for reviews, I’ve only had a few (of any flavour), and some of them have made me gnash my teeth and want to meet the reviewer to explain points that have been missed or overlooked, but the ones which – and this is what sfd seemed to be alluding to initially – just border on personal abuse… well, clearly the critic has their own problems, and I take comfort in the old thing about ‘those who can, do; those who can’t, review’, simplistic as it may be…

DBC

12:14 / 28.08.02

Actually, I did meet the bloke that gave me a really bad review. We actually spent the evening chatting away, and he said the difference between us was that he saw the world through rose coloured lenses, while mine were tinted with shit. I'd prefer to call it realism, but he was pretty close to the mark.

He also said he wrote horror, but 'always with some comedy in it'. Hrumph.

12:22 / 28.08.02

Sounds pretty insulting, really – are you sure that his assessment of your worldview is necessarily any more worthy of paying attention to than his comments on your work?

DBC

12:36 / 28.08.02

Oh, normally I would agree with you, but at the time I was in a horrible, abusive relationship and stuck in the closet, so my outlook on life was incredibly grim. I'm much more sorted these days, the worldview is still dark, but I have more of a focus for how I feel, what I write and why. Which is why I can't forgive his trivialisation of horror.

13:02 / 28.08.02

Ah, I see.

And yes : horror, but always with some comedy in it. Don’t know if his definition really works… sounds a bit like ‘water, but always with some orange cordial in it’.

Good for you, though, that you know about how your feelings connect with what you write, and the reason why. I think a lot of people fail to assess a lot of these things in themselves, let alone see how they inform their writing.

DBC

18:53 / 28.08.02

"...I was in a horrible, abusive relationship and stuck in the closet, so my outlook on life was incredibly grim..."

Heh. Been there, done that, got the tattoo.

By the last years of marriage to my demented, bipolar wife, who had AIDS, my characters insisted on murdering each other or committing suicide, often followed by cannibalism. For a smut writer, this got to be quite tiresome.

Nowadays, although I have to speak sternly to my characters to keep them from sprouting wings and flying about at will, they rarely kill and eat each other. Phew!