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
 
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