It just doesn't seem to end...

I am on the editorial board for a new scholarly journal about American mystery and detective fiction. (Don't be too impressed: one of NCC's adjuncts is a big gun on the faculty of Pace: he put it together and invited me to be on the board just because we've had some fun chats about it.) But I'm now reading one of the submissions for the inaugural issue, and although the sentences are several orders of magnitude above what most of my students could do, and the the whole thing is significantly longer, I find myself writing very similar comments in the margins: "Link to thesis?" "Plot summary; what does this prove?" And the perennial favorite, "So?"

I suspect the thing was written by a grad student (and probably not a very advanced one), but ... yeesh. I was expecting something a lot more impressive, I have to say.

I did suggest that we use a ratings system like that used by other journals for whom I've been a jury member: accept, accept with minor changes, accept pending significant changes, reject. The main editor--my adjunct colleague--agreed with the whole idea. Since this is our first time out of the gate with submissions, there's a lot we haven't codified ("house" style--in general but especially in terms of documentation, standards of scholarship, how to give feedback), but that could be kinda fun to do, assuming the journal takes off. I think it will. There's really only one scholarly journal right now dedicated to mystery and detective fiction, and it tends to focus heavily on the Brits. Ours--entitled Mean Streets--will focus primarily on Americans. In fact, this inaugural issue is all about the late Sue Grafton, who sadly didn't finish the alphabet before her death. (And she already had the title picked out, ages ago, though of course she might have changed her mind: Z Is for Zero.) Even though the essay I'm reading is somewhere between "accept pending significant changes" and "reject," it has the benefit of making me want to read all the novels again, starting with A Is for Alibi. That's not a bad thing, all in all.

Interesting to still be doing something semi-scholarly, even though I've given up being a scholar. Though I still consider doing my "Real Fantasy versus Fake Fantasy, or Why I Hate Harry Potter" article. Maybe. Or maybe not. We'll see.

So far, I have one appointment in the WC tomorrow. That may well change, but I hope I can finish reviewing and writing up notes about the article for Mean Streets as well as doing ... oh, anything else that's moderately productive. In any event, it's kinda fun to have something to post about, even on a non-work day.