Real-Time Reviewing
 

Did I invent this type of reviewing? (Based on a forty year study of Wimsatt's 'The Intentional Fallacy' and the actual reading of fiction texts with both enjoyment and rigorousness...)

Self-doubt creeps in, just as easily as extraneity creeps in.

Neil Williamson, I think, first called them 'Real-Time Reviews'. Some have also called them 'stream-of conscious' reviews. Others, perhaps with an intentionally(?) pejorative purpose, have called them 'interactive' reviews. They have not yet become fully interactive because most authors have taught themselves to be reticent about reactions to reviews. Which is a shame, as my view (in tune with Wimsatt) is that each reader owns a fiction text, and the author, once the text is posited in the audience arena, is just another reader, equally empowered to comment upon the text he or she once created.

A few authors I've real-time reviewed have not commented at all, either to me personally or publicly.

Many of the authors have commented on the real-time reviews that I've given their books and I quote them here: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/rec...oks_by_dfl.htm

And yesteday: HERE

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

Thanks to Roy for pointing it out, but it looks as if I've started a trend. Here's a real-time review on the new Dan Brown from the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/sep/15/lost-symbol-live-reading-dan-brown




My real-time reviewing:
http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/recent_reviews_of_books_by_dfl.htm

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

Some of my most recent real-time reviews:

18 Mar 10): Pieces of Midnight - by Gary McMahon
(24 Mar 10): Xargos - a novel by Frances Oliver
(1 Apr 10): The Sixth Black Book of Horror
(5 Apr 10): Back From The Dead
(11 Apr 10): Literary Remains - by R.B. Russell
(14 Apr 10): The Terror and the Tortoiseshell - John Travis
(23 Apr 10): Putting the Pieces in Place - R.B. Russell
(26 Apr 10): Solar - Ian McEwan
(3 May 10): Tragic Life Stories - by Steve Duffy
(19 May 10): The Peacock's Eye - by Frances Oliver
(27 May 2010): Remember You're a One-Ball! - by Quentin S. Crisp
(1 June 2010): The Man Who Collected Machen & Other Stories
(5 June 2010): The Tourist Season - by Frances Oliver
(10 June 2010): All Souls - by Frances Oliver
(15 June 2010): Where The Heart Is (Gray Friar Press)
(1 July 2010): The Conspiracy Against The Human Race
(3 July 2010): Margaret - by PF Jeffery
(3 July 2010): Dark Awakenings - by Matt Cardin
(11 July 2010): The Silver Voices - by John Howard
(12 July 2010): Groaning Shadows - by Paul Finch

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

Thank you for your ongoing real-time review of Margaret. :)

DFLewis: 'Margaret' by PF Jeffery

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

Thanks for the thanks. :)

Sometimes some reviews take longer than I expected, others shorter, but I try to post the next part of any real-time review when I sense it is synchronously appropriate - for the benefit of the book being reviewed and for the reviewer (the 'me' at that moment) - even if that means, in hindsight, disproportionate timing and slicing of the review out of sequence with others.

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

I expect that how quickly you post the reviews is some indication of how quickly you're reading the book. Isn't that what the real-time bit is about? Or am I confused?

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

The three most recent of my Real-Time Reviews have created the most challlenge I’ve ever had in such an approach, each for different reasons.

NEVER AGAIN edited by Allyson Bird & Joel Lane

TENEBROUS TALES by Christopher Barker

AN EMPORIUM OF AUTOMATA by D.P. Watt

All reviews at link below.
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/df-lewis-real-time-reviews/

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

Real-Time Reviewing as a ‘work-in-progress’ view of static art.

RTR second anniversary thoughts:
http://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/...-art-thinking/

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

My real-time reviewing has taken off more substantially in recent months -- complete list here: REAL-TIME REVIEWS.

Special RTR Blocks:

===============================================
The WEIRD – Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
===============================================
The world’s first detailed review of all the published fiction works of FRANCES OLIVER
================================================== ====
My Chômu Press Real-Time Reviews
================================================== ====
Ex Occidente Press – My Real-Time Reviews
================================================== ====
Ash Tree Press – My Real-Time Reviews
================================================== ====
Real-Time Reviews of Ebooks
=================================================
My Real-Time Reviews of Stephen King (The Dark Tower etc)
================================================== ====
Gray Friar Press – My Real-Time Reviews
================================================== ====
TTA Press – My Real Time Reviews
================================================== ====
Elastic Press – My Real-Time Reviews
================================================== ====
Gary Fry & Gary McMahon – My Real-Time Reviews
================================================== ====
My real-time reviews of Steve Rasnic Tem fiction included here: Black Static #12 — Cinnabar’s Gnosis — Null Immortalis — Black Static #19 — Ghosts (Crimewave Eleven) — The Far Side of the Lake – Interzone #239
================================================== ====
Mark Valentine: The Nightfarers – Cinnabar’s Gnosis – The Mascarons of the Late Empire & Other Studies – Null Immortalis – The Peacock Escritoire – The Master in Café Morphine – THE HA OF HA – Secret Europe
================================================== =====
“DFL DVD-Director-type commentaries” (hot recommended!):-
“Real-Time Review of ‘Weirdmonger’ by DF Lewis” by DF Lewis – Writer’s Commentary
CERN Zoo – the original DFL ‘Editor’s Commentary’ – the Collider made me do it!
Null Immortalis – the Editor’s Commentary (bonus feature)
The Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

Volumes 11 & 12 of the Real-Time Review Books

http://static.lulu.com/browse/produc...resolution=320 http://static.lulu.com/browse/produc...resolution=320
Details: HERE

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

There seems something false about my method of real-time reviewing, a self-conscious approach to books where my actual knowledge of being publicly witnessed approaching in real-time those books chapter by chapter or story by story often affects the approach itself.
However, having conducted this experiment since 2008, I genuinely feel such an approach often catches otherwise uncatchable dreams and connects otherwise unconnectable elements in the book. And if more of us buy books and make this same approach, then books, thus triangulated, would prosper.
In this regard, I have been particularly satisfied by my most recent specific reviews of books by Laurence Sterne, Alasdair Gray, James Joyce, John Langan, Steve Rasnic Tem and Nathan Ballingrud, arguably making already great books even greater, at least for this particular reader (me). Hopefully for others readers, too. Even for the books' authors themselves!

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

Nemonymous, your real-time reviews - I've only read a few of them - seem curiously related to the method used by Roland Barthes in S/Z. I wonder if you would agree? All the differences taken for granted...

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

I have not read that, i'm afraid, although I have just skimmed through the Wikipedia about it. It seems far more linguistic than my approach, but I thank you for drawing my attention to it, and I think I ought to follow it up.

My approach has been facilitated by the Internet and the psychological effect on me of knowing (or pretending!) that others are concurrently reading my review as I write it, as I read the book, perhaps as they read the book alongside me - coupled with a need to create a gestalt from a book, even from a multi-authored anthology. My ultimate aim is for books to be triangulated by several people carrying out this process concurrently.

That is one aspect of my approach at least, but it has been an evolutionary process. And still is.

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

An optimal example of this is hopefully my latest completion of a dreamcatcher book review of 'Journeys Beyond Advice' by Rhys Hughes here.
Each review is indeed a defiant 'journey beyond advice'?

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

I have now attempted a reading of s/z by means of the PDF available on-line and I have given up as it seems completely over my head! :(
It was written in 1970 and Barthes died in 1980. So the crucial factor of the Internet that is central to my evolutionary Dreamcaptchas (once called gestalt real-time reviews) was missing. He seems to have some idea concerning codes, though, that may relate to the most recent evolution of my process (deriving from my Finnegans Wake review). I have never agreed with Barthes' idea of the death of the author, but more with the intentional fallacy views of Wimsatt that I find more amenable to the author.
My gestalt method seems simplistic as well as flexible - made for and by the Internet age; Barthes' method, as far as I understand or misunderstand it, seems hidebound by linguistic symbols and ill-tuned to poetry or instinct or any conceivable preternatural features of literature.

Thanks again.

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

I am pleased to see that my real-time reviewing site has been nominated for a British Fantasy Award:
British Fantasy Awards 2014: the nominees | The British Fantasy Society

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

My original Real-Time Reviews of British Fantasy Award 2014 nominees

Links:
Dogs With Their Eyes Shut, Paul Meloy (PS Publishing)
Spin, Nina Allan (TTA Press)
Vivian Guppy and the Brighton Belle, Nina Allan (Rustblind and Silverbright)
Whitstable, Stephen Volk (Spectral Press)
Death Walks En Pointe, Thana Niveau (The Burning Circus)
Signs of the Times, Carole Johnstone (Black Static #33)
North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud (Small Beer Press)
Rustblind and Silverbright, David Rix (ed.) (Eibonvale Press)
Black Static, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
Interzone, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
.
Total list of nominees HERE.

It just proves to me how few I have read among the nominees! Probably why I never feel able to vote.

I would have thought the Colin Insole and Christopher Harman collections might have been included. But there are many other books I would have included in the various categories, but, as I say, I feel I have not read enough to make any choice meaningful. For example, any student of Weird Fiction in any year should have read the Zagava/Ex Occidente canon. And likewise, I myself have no doubt missed out on other large canons of stuff that should be considered for award.

My own 2013 collection (‘A Dead Monument To Once Ancient Hope’ – “…as much a ‘D.F. Lewis’ collection as it is an Ex Occidente Press homage to an European icon.”), and my 2013 edited anthology (‘Horror Without Victims’ – “… this is among the strongest anthologies published in 2013 and confirms Lewis’ standing as one of the most innovative editors currently working in the field of fantastic literature.” – Black Static review), and my Small Press Organization (Megazanthus Press) should have been nominated – well, of course!

Seriously, I am very grateful and proud that my ‘gestalt real-time reviewing’ itself has been nominated. Thanks so much. And congratulations to all nominees. And thanks to the British Fantasy Awards administrator for his hard work.

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

My most recent real-time reviews, some finished, others 'in media res' or just started:

https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...as-stromsholt/ Splinters of Horn and Ivory – Thomas Strømsholt

https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...-joan-lindsay/ Picnic at Hanging Rock – Joan Lindsay

https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...ilvina-ocampo/ THUS WERE THEIR FACES – Silvina Ocampo

https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...z-danielewski/ THE FAMILIAR – Mark Z. Danielewski

https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...ack-static-46/ Interzone 258 / Black Static 46

https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...the-white-day/ Romances of the White Day: in the Tradition of Arthur Machen

https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...robert-aickman THE STRANGERS and other writings by Robert Aickman

https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...ickmans-heirs/ Aickman's Heirs - edited by Simon Strantzas


Please let me know if you would like to upload your own real-time reviews to my relatively well-trafficked Dreamcatcher site.

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

Some of the recent public comments on #GestaltRealTimeReviewing:
* | DES LEWIS GESTALT REAL-TIME REVIEWS - 10th Anniversary

The 2018 reviews so far:
* | DES LEWIS GESTALT REAL-TIME REVIEWS - 10th Anniversary

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

Those of you who trust my tastes MUST read this book -
THE PARRY AND THE LUNGE by David Mathew

Probably an epiphany of literature.

Re: Real-Time Reviewing
 

High praise indeed, Des, I have just ordered! Many thanks!