mean people really do suck
Got a rejection letter from Composition Studies yesterday for an essay I wrote about teaching the personal essay. The first review letter was at least kind in its rejection--gave me some things to think about in an encouraging way, a way that made me think that maybe, just maybe, I might have something to say on the subject.
The second review letter, though, was just plain mean and seemed to glory in it. "I have read your paper with mounting annoyance." Great way to start a review. Thanks.
"What's your point? Or points? Yes, I know that a personal essay doesn't necessarily have to have a thesis, but what's it about?" And then the reviewer goes on to make more mean commentary in a way that suggests he (it can only be a he, says S.) knows exactly what the essay is about.
There's a point in the essay where I talk about the ways that I've told so many of my students stories about Annabelle--but that last semester, I found that I had stopped doing this. This was curious to me. The reviewer wants to know how "knowing about Annabelle, the cutsiefied canine, will help your students to write better, rather than to encourage them to exchange sentimental anecdotes or write them and thus to use them as a substitute for the hard-edged critical thinking you appear to advocate via the discussion of Ways of Reading." Um, hi, I think the point I was trying to make, oh friendly person, was that something happened last semester that made me stop telling so many Annabelle stories. I'm sure everything you do in the classroom, every word you say and every story you tell helps students to write better.
Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick.
The first reviewer understood my essay as a whole. The second reviewer nitpicked this and that, enough to fill up two single-spaced pages, but never acknowledged that the essay has a point but maybe I wasn't as successful as I thought I was in making that point. No. What matters is that every word I say in the classroom is not directed toward helping students write. Because sometimes I want them to see me as a human being. Which is what I'd like to believe about this reviewer, but it's hard.
I know how bitter I sound. And it's not just because I was rejected. It's because I was rejected in a mean-spirited way, and the person who wrote that review cannot be held accountable. If this were my first piece sent out for publication, you can be pretty damn sure I wouldn't be sending anything else out anytime soon.
I'm not giving up on my essay. I'm taking the first person's advice and reworking it.
I was pretty down yesterday because of this. Not only did I feel like a bad writer, I felt like a horrible teacher, what with spending so much time talking about my dog instead of teaching students how to write with "ease, elegance, and grace." But then S. pointed out just how poorly this review itself was written--all over the place, unable to see the whole for the nitpicking parts--and I felt a little better. If there's one thing this reviewer could learn from the personal essay, it's that in order to be taken seriously as a writer, you've got to at least show some inkling of a willingness to implicate yourself in the faults that seem to lie elsewhere. Ending your review with "Best wishes" ain't gonna cut it.
Labels: writing
posted by aerobil @ 5:40 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Hi Amy:
That sounds like a really bad experience. I think that if possible, we should sign our reviews to increase accountability in the process. I know that some journals allow for this--I have done it as a review when I have been allowed-and I think it's something to keep talking about. People need to think of the writer as a human being. This doesn't preclude writing a negative review, but it would keep the negative review from being petty, or in your case, just plain mean.
Kelly
Kelly makes an interesting point--I know that online anonymity seems to give some folks (well, a LOT of folks, of all ages) license to be mean.
And it's always frustrating in our field when folks don't show the same degree of respect for each other we demand that we show our students. Like when rhetoricians demonstrate a total lack of rhetorical savvy or sensitivity with dealing with colleagues.
You'll hold my hand when I finally get off my ass and submit stuff for publication, right?
I recently got a rejection after working months with one of the editorial assistants of journal. The rejection made it seem as if neither I nor the EA could string two sentences together. Additionally, s(he) devalued the work by being incredibly flippant about the topic. After recovering from the sobbing mess I was, I realized I could use his comments to point exactly why the kind of work I am trying to do is important. In my eventual revision (it's too tender now) I may even quote him.
I say take his misreading and make it part of your larger point; that will help you feel vindicated I think.
Amy, I had a similar experience with this same journal. What is it whth their reviewers?
Your reviewer is an insecure heap of palpitating jelly. S/he lives in fear of being found out. S/he writes so-called erudite prose that basically no one really understands, but because of his/her reputation and connections one feels it must be brilliant when it is far from it. His/her claim to fame is based on hype. There is a huge difference between a writer and an editor.
shoe
I have to agree with Anonymous. The reviewer obviously has a sad and unrewarding life. Don't take the review seriously--I doubt his (yeah, I agree--sounds male to me) comments have anything at all to do with you or what you wrote.
There's no excuse for the mean-spiritedness you describe. I think these types of problematic peer reviews often stem from reviewers' attempt to hijack the article under review: 'don't write the piece you are writing, write the piece I think you should write.'
Maybe peer reviewers should go back to intro. creative writing and talk about workshopping guidelines like 'Evaluate a work-in-progress on ITS OWN relative merits and de-merits.' I know that peer reviews and classroom workshops are two very different rhetorical situations, but affording certain kinds of agency to the writer should extend across both situations, no?
I agree with Kelly R. that we probably shouldn't operate under the assumption that "double blind" is the only way to have rigor, advance knowledge, etc.
At any rate, keep working on the piece...sounds interesting and more than worthwhile!
Thanks, everyone. I guess I knew at some level that what you're all saying is true--that only really insecure people write stuff like this, that it's really about him and not about me (funny, I even say something about that in my essay itself--about how the worries I'm having about teaching a particular essay are really about me, not the essay). But when I read that review the first 3 or 4times I couldn't help but feel that it was directed squarely at ME. Because the essay's so, um, personal. And my dear friend Julie reminded me that this has happened before...and the work in question was then published by College English. Press on.
Maybe there needs to be an Editing School for comp/rhet. It's ridiculous that our reviewers and editors don't follow the discipline's foundational principles of responding to writing. Oh, it's only STUDENT writers who need to be treated with dignity and respect?
This simply shouldn't happen, and fortunately it usually doesn't (though the other review you received that went on to appear in CE shows that this isn't the end of your article--by any means).
What makes this especially disturbing, though, is the tone the reviewer adopts. If the article made it through the first level of review and was sent to reviewers, the editors obviously saw merit in it.
I would like to say that I've received some fair and helpful reviews from Composition Studies. I think it's a fine journal, and I don't think this is reflective of the journal itself. Still, there's simply no excuse for this type of vitriolic response.
P
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