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Risks redux: an editorial perspective
Oct. 28th, 2009 12:27 pmThe bathroom renovation was completed in an astonishing 5 days, and we're now enjoying the new facilities greatly. We've even managed to largely restore order to the house. But the reaming out of the bathroom (generating an impossible amount of debris), combined with a ton of work and the final preparations before a week-long trip to the U.S., have prevented much in the way of bloggery.
So, back to the meat: I finally finished reading through Risk and Crisis Communication (Heath and O'Hair, 2009), and now have a good first draft of the 700-word review that will be published. I'm endlessly amazed that it's possible to devote roughly one word per page to an entire book and still manage to capture its essence. Each time, I never believe I'll be able to do it, always gripe to my editor until I've gotten it out of my system, then buckle down and somehow manage it. This short review should appear in Technical Communication in early 2010, after which I'll republish the review on my Web site. Look for it by summer?
More problematic are the nearly 50K words of chapter summaries I created as I read—about 1500 words per chapter. These longer notes are more of a challenge. I think I know a publisher that might be willing to consider a comprehensive summary of the book, but 50K words is too long even for them; boiling it down by about half will be required. More interesting would be something entirely different: remixing and condensing those notes into a synthesis of everything the chapter authors took 700 pages and 33 chapters to say. Since there's no such summary in the book, clearly this would be a useful contribution to the literature, but will also require a major effort of reorganizing my thoughts. That would take at least 1 day of concentrated effort just to unite all the mingled thoughts. Maybe over the Xmas break? Possibly I'll end up publishing both versions.
Summary of the key points that will eventually appear in the review:
The book is an impressive collection of chapters that provide a comprehensive overview of the field of risk and crisis communication from both immensely practical perspectives and from important, but usually abstruse, theoretical perspectives.
It would have been easier to read and grok the articles had the volume editors hired an editor. Typos and other blemishes are inevitable and forgivable, but if I'm going to pay more than US$200 for a book, it's unacceptable to litter the text with howling errors such as the following: "chemical weapons such as... mustard" (p. 31; presumably "mustard gas" rather than strong Dijon) and misattributing Hamlet's "to be or not to be" speech to As You Like It (p. 192).
Okay... now I ***really** want to write a mashup of Hamlet with As You Like It. The mind boggles...
The pomo/cultural studies/critical theory folks do themselves their usual disservice by writing near-indecipherable prose, though admittedly not as bad as some I've seen—or perhaps I'm just getting used to the language. In so doing, they make it difficult for non-specialist readers to see that they have something important to say.
Reviewing this book was a distinctly mixed pleasure. On the one hand, I had to force myself to return to each new chapter, approaching the book with some dread each time. (Mostly because of the length and amount of time required.) But on the other hand, forcing myself to grapple with and integrate all this new information, most of it fascinating and insightful, was good exercise for an aging brain. So on the whole, I'm glad I made the effort.
But I do have this fantasy in which the volume editors come to me and ask me what it would take to turn this book into something publishable—"and never mind the price".
So, back to the meat: I finally finished reading through Risk and Crisis Communication (Heath and O'Hair, 2009), and now have a good first draft of the 700-word review that will be published. I'm endlessly amazed that it's possible to devote roughly one word per page to an entire book and still manage to capture its essence. Each time, I never believe I'll be able to do it, always gripe to my editor until I've gotten it out of my system, then buckle down and somehow manage it. This short review should appear in Technical Communication in early 2010, after which I'll republish the review on my Web site. Look for it by summer?
More problematic are the nearly 50K words of chapter summaries I created as I read—about 1500 words per chapter. These longer notes are more of a challenge. I think I know a publisher that might be willing to consider a comprehensive summary of the book, but 50K words is too long even for them; boiling it down by about half will be required. More interesting would be something entirely different: remixing and condensing those notes into a synthesis of everything the chapter authors took 700 pages and 33 chapters to say. Since there's no such summary in the book, clearly this would be a useful contribution to the literature, but will also require a major effort of reorganizing my thoughts. That would take at least 1 day of concentrated effort just to unite all the mingled thoughts. Maybe over the Xmas break? Possibly I'll end up publishing both versions.
Summary of the key points that will eventually appear in the review:
Reviewing this book was a distinctly mixed pleasure. On the one hand, I had to force myself to return to each new chapter, approaching the book with some dread each time. (Mostly because of the length and amount of time required.) But on the other hand, forcing myself to grapple with and integrate all this new information, most of it fascinating and insightful, was good exercise for an aging brain. So on the whole, I'm glad I made the effort.
But I do have this fantasy in which the volume editors come to me and ask me what it would take to turn this book into something publishable—"and never mind the price".