Review: Interfictions 2

Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak

Buy It Now: on Amazon

Description: Delving deeper into the genre-spanning territory explored in Interfictions, the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s first groundbreaking anthology, Interfictions 2 showcases twenty-one original and innovative writers. It includes contributions from authors from six countries, including the United States, Poland, Norway, Australia, France, and Great Britain.

Newcomers such as Alaya Dawn Johnson, Theodora Goss, and Alan DeNiro rub shoulders with established visionaries such as Jeffrey Ford (The Drowned Life), Brian Francis Slattery (Liberation), Nin Andrews (The Book of Orgasms), and M. Rickert (Map of Dreams). Also featured are works by Will Ludwigsen, Cecil Castellucci, Ray Vukcevich, Carlos Hernandez, Lavie Tidhar, Elizabeth Ziemska, Peter M. Ball, Camilla Bruce, Amelia Beamer, William Alexander, Shira Lipkin, Lionel Davoust, Stephanie Shaw, and David J. Schwartz.

Colleen Mondor, of the well-known blog Chasing Ray, interviews the editors for the afterword.

Henry Jenkins, ex-director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies program and now a member of USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and School of Cinematic Arts, provides a fantastic introduction sure to set readers’ imaginations alight.

Interfictions 2 is here and ready to be read, discussed, taught, blogged, taken apart, and re-interpreted.

Delia Sherman was born in Tokyo, Japan, and brought up in New York City. She earned a PhD in Renaissance Studies at Brown University and taught at Boston University and Northeastern University. She is the author of the novels Through a Brazen Mirror, The Porcelain Dove, Changeling, and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. A co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, she lives in New York City.

Christopher Barzak is the author of the novels One for Sorrow and The Love We Share Without Knowing. His stories have appeared in Nerve.com, Pindeldyboz, Strange Horizons, Descant, and the first volume of Interfictions. He teaches writing at Youngstown State University.

This review is based on a free review copy received from the publisher.

The Bibliomaniac’s Review: See below.

From the introduction by Henry Jenkins:

“1. I do not belong in this book.

2. The contributors also do not belong.

3. You, like Groucho Marx, wouldn’t want to belong even if you could. Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t have picked up this book in the first place.”

Carrying that theme one step further, I must admit that I don’t belong, either—although not in the way that the writers and editors of Interfictions 2 intended, I suspect.  Never having encountered interstitial writing before, I leaped at the chance to see what it was all about.  Having finished reading the book, it’s clear to me that I’m not the type of reader that this book was meant for.  I like my stories to fit into neat little categories—or, at the least, to follow standard rules of storytelling.

Interfictions 2, like its predecessor, takes pride in showcasing stories that don’t fit in neatly-defined categories. Neither SF nor fantasy, detective story nor ghost story, belonging to no clearly-established genre, most of the stories in this collection defy explanation.  Not only do they step outside of the boundaries of genre, but many of the stories eschew the standard rules of narrative and framework, as well, employing unorthodox formats and styles to convey the stories being told.

That said, I can’t give this book a standard rating of ‘five stars’ or ‘three stars’ or ‘no stars’. As is true of every collection, some of the stories in Interfictions 2 worked better than others for me.  I very much enjoyed Will Ludwigsen’s “Remembrance is Something Like a House”, “L’Ile Close” by Lionel Davoust, and Carlos Hernandez’ “The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria”; likewise “Black Dog: A Biography” by Peter M. Ball, “Valentines” by Shira Lipkin, “The Score” by Alaya Dawn Johnson, “Count Poniatowski and the Beautiful Chicken” by Elizabeth Ziemska, and “The 121”, by David J. Schwarz.  Theodora Goss’ story “Child-Empress of Mars” was also fairly entertaining, hearkening back to the pulps of Edgar Rice Burroughs (as it was intended to, according to the author’s afterword).  “The Long and Short of Long-Term Memory” by Cecil Castellucci and “Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse”, by Camilla Bruce, were interesting, if ultimately—to me—unsuccessful attempts at clearly conveying the stories they were trying to tell.

But most of the other stories left me feeling unmoved, or irritated, or just confused.  The harder it was for me to follow a story, the more likely I was to give up on it before reaching the end, which is—I think—the exact opposite of what the author hopes to achieve. If a reader can’t, or won’t, finish the story, then the author has failed at telling it. It’s worth noting that the stories I enjoyed most were the ones that most closely adhered to standard narrative forms (although most of them could not be pinned to one genre or another quite so easily, which I don’t appear to object to as much).

I’m aware that this collection has garnered a fairly substantial amount of enthusiastic and positive word of mouth, in the form of reviews and other kudos (for example, the book has been selected as one of the best books of the year in SF by Amazon.com). This only further indicates to me that I’m not this book’s intended target reader.  It’d not only be counterproductive and time-consuming to give a separate review to each story, it’d be unfair.  I can’t remember where I originally ran across the aphorism “In matters of taste, every man is a king,” but it applies here. This is not a bad book; no part of it is slapdash, clichéd, trite, poorly edited or written, clunky, or boring. It’s simply—mostly—not to my taste, and has received much better reviews at the hands of those readers for whom it was clearly intended.

That said, I did appreciate the chance to read Interfictions 2, and look at the experience as a chance to broaden my horizons. For me, it appears that interstitial writing is an acquired taste, one gained bit by bit over many encounters, which would make this my first taste of what will hopefully be a new delight to come.