The Best American Mystery Stories 2014

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THE WORDS subjective and subjectivity are extremely useful. What they describe is like the blood in the veins of an editor who is forced to reject a book or story. There is an inherent insult implicit in rejection. The editor is essentially saying, Your work isn’t good enough; it doesn’t measure up. What a dreadful thing to hear! After months, or even years, of slaving over a manuscript-rewriting again and again, arriving at le mot juste after trying a dozen other words, even desperately resorting to a thesaurus, editing line by line, fine-tuning (comma? or semicolon?)-and finally being convinced that it is as good as it is ever going to be, you are so proud of it that you are willing to send it out to the world. To hear that it’s being rejected is brutally painful.

A diplomatic editor can help lessen the blow by employing the word subjective. “I have no doubt that plenty of editors will feel differently about it, because of course all taste is subjective.” “I’m sorry, but it’s just not my kind of book-but I’m sure you understand that editorial decisions are always subjective.” And so on. These aren’t lies. Well, not always. There are times when the complete sentence might well be “It’s just not my kind of book… because I like books that have a modicum of originality and that haven’t been scrawled with a crayon, like this one.”

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