My new books

Theo Paijmans wrote:

> I am very curious as to how the tomes are! Are there by any chance
> entries for Ben van Eijsselsteijn, Ernst Willkom, Friedrich Wilhelm
> Mader, Frederic Boutet, Dacquer, Bechstein or Van Bemmelen?

I confess to having mixed feelings about this encyclopedia. It has thus
far provided many enjoyable hours and I am not sorry that I made the
purchase. But there are, I feel, definite shortcomings. Theo's question
highlights one of them. I don't believe there are entries for any of
the writers he mentions. The very title of the set refers to literature
of the *world* and blurbs on various sites note that over 20 countries
are represented within its pages; nevertheless, the overwhelming
emphasis seems to be on authors from English-speaking countries.
Whether that is a good or a bad thing is, I suppose, for the individual
reader to decide. (There also seems to a disproportionate number of
entries for more recent authors.)

I also have misgivings about the organization and nature of the
individual entries. In addition to author entries, there are entries
for individual works and for more general topics (e.g., urban legends,
southern Gothic literature, UFOs, etc.). I would have preferred to see
discussion of individual works lumped into the author entries rather
than treated in isolation, but that's perhaps a quibble. As for the
general articles, while some are indeed quite interesting, I often
found myself thinking them somewhat superfluous -- that is, many of
topics, it seemed to me, cried out for far, far more treatment than
allowable given the space constraints of this encyclopedia. I
personally would have opted to jettison some or all of these general
articles and instead include data on additional, perhaps
less-well-known writers.

It is a vastly unfair comparison since their purposes are different
(more critical-analytical as opposed to checklist), but after looking
over the Joshi-Dziemianowicz encyclopedia, part of me wishes that
someone might one day attempt to expand/update Bleiler's compendium.
But I doubt that will ever happen. (As always, your mileage may vary.)

Yrs,

Michael