Some Thoughts on Reviews, Comprehensiveness, and 'best' short stories

[alecaustin]

So let's talk a little bit about short fiction reviews, the rhetoric of 'best', and stuff like that.

Neil Clarke had an editorial recently in which he argued that short fiction reviews don't have much value - his proxy for 'value' being whether they drive readership, in terms of measurable impact on incoming web traffic. With some exceptions - he

Comments

[sartorias]

I pretty much agree with everything you said here, though I'd love to hear more about maximizers and satisficers.

People are going to talk about best of and awards--and while my eye slides away as soon as I see those words highlighted, the same as my eye slides away from ads and commercials--I recognize that it's going to happen. We seem wired to have hierarchies.

My problem with most short fiction (especially the highly touted stuff before I stopped paying attention) is that it's easier for it to fall into predictable patterns given the short length. Sometimes I'll notice pattern clusters, like, this writer has been moving toward shock value in place of character development. Or whatever, but anyway I wonder if this is a function of having been reading a lot for over fifty years, and seeing the patterns in the fictional conversation we are having. (If I know where a story is going and really like that direction, I get the pleasure of the read, but surprise is rare anymore. Which makes me think about surprise and shock value, that is, how much is "best of" dependent on the reader being surprised?)

Adding: if this makes even less sense than usual, it's broiling hot here, and that doth not help old brains brain.

[alecaustin]

I'm back in your neck of the woods again, so I definitely hear you on the broiling hot. (Thankfully, both my current and soon-to-be-current apartments have AC.)

The literature on Maximizers vs Satisficers is derived from Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice, in which he argues that people who are willing to make decisions which will produce merely good results, rather than spending a lot of effort searching for the 'best' version of something, tend to be happier. Basically, the opportunity costs which the Maximizers incur in trying to make the optimal decision in one arena keep them from reaching more good outcomes in other arenas, and also mean they're more anxious about whether they actually made the right choice or not. (Obviously everyone is a maximizer some of the time and a satisficer some of the time.)

[sartorias]

Thank you! Have to think on that. (When thinking can actually be done.)