About six months ago, I spoke with several friends in film academia who noted that the rejections they had been receiving over the past few years from a wide spectrum of journals had become increasingly user-unfriendly. The complaints variously concerned the vicarious competitiveness of the reviewer, the reviewer citing in the most nitpicking fashion all the articles and books buried in the literature the author hadn't read, or if read, had been incompletely understood, so forth. I counted myself lucky at the time not to have received any examples of this invidious rancor. I have certainly received my share of rejections over the years, but they have been courteous, and often instructive in aid of cleaning up an article and resubmitting. This weekend I finally received a classic rejection of the above breed from a journal which will go nameless. I had presented the paper in question in several venues, where it was quite well received, and discussed as a serious contribution by junior and senior colleagues alike, including several specialists in the area under consideration. The reviewer knew me by name, which was arguably my fault because I had not placed this on a separate page -- but the name certainly could have been whited out had anyone cared. He or she cited my earlier work with approval, noted my evident decline, at least in this case, made any number of disdainful comments indicating my absolute ignorance of the recent literature, and in so stating completely overlooked my central point(s) which others had welcomed as both novel and refreshing. The reviewer ended on a sniffy note by stating that since the paper was likely to be published somewhere, for all of its shortcomings, some mis-spellings ought to be corrected. The editor of the journal sent this to me under the rubric that I might find it helpful, noting that at least one other reviewer also hadn't wanted to publish the piece. At first, I was tempted to respond that if sending the comments to me was his idea of helpful, I'd shudder to be on the receiving end of any comments th editor deemed harmful. I then decided to stand upon my dignity -- but remembering Churchill's mot to the effect that one rarely helps one's dignity by standing upon it, eventually decided to post my experience to this and another litcrit list. I also spoke once more to several friends in academia, who told me after I imparted the reviewer's comments that I should consider myself lucky -- then told me various horror stories about reviews they had been given, which made my experience seem like high praise indeed. A few said that they had grown so disillusioned that they only submitted when asked, and then mostly to book collections. So, I ask the screen-l contributors -- have you had any similar experiences? From what I've heard -- litcrit and film crit, altho no reason why art- and music-crit shouldn't also be suffering from the affliction -- this problem has been growing over the past 3-5 years or so. It seems to me that a larger study, or a seminar of some sort might be in order here. If the phenomenon is in fact occurring, can anyone hazard a theory or two as to why? I'm a reasonably old hand at this game, but I can well imagine the total despair of a younger writer, submitting for the first time, exposed to this destructive wrath...would he or she want to have another go, or be tempted to remain silent henceforth? Many thanks Harvey Roy Greenberg, MD ---- To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]