2017
May April February2016
June May2015
October September June April March2014
August JulySEE ALL ARCHIVES
January 13, 2009
An editor’s ego
Reading Pat Holt’s extraordinary post against editing set me back on my haunches for a few days. (I was obsessing on the section of that post that appears under the label “An Example.”) I had to take another look at what I do. And that reflection finally led me back to an extended written dialogue that I engaged in with Marc Estrin in February of 2006.
Marc had invited me to enter an email colloquy about the relationship between the author and the editor—about our own professional relationship. I believe we were at the time backing and forthing on what I consider his most courageous novel: Golem Song . The protagonist of that novel, Alan Kreiger, R.N.—a sexist and racist E.R. nurse provocateur—is a protagonist so grotesque and unforgivable as to be a challenge to the reader. To say the least.
Our discussion about the nature of tasking such a character with carrying a novel had led Marc to posit “the maggot problem”—at times “the Fred and maggot problem.” That term was reference to an earlier back and forthing between us about the level of prominence that should be given to the open wound on Gregor Samsa’s back in Marc’s first-published novel: Insect Dreams . (Gregor had suffered that wound when struck by an apple thrown by his disgusted father in Kafka’s Metamorphosis.) Marc is certain that I suffer a sensibility that is too delicate.
Anyway, the colloquy was meant by Marc to address a basic question, one echoed in Pat Holt’s post: Whence the editor’s authority to assert that he or she speaks for the readers of the world?
This is not a bad question.
A recent very clever video posted by the digital marketing department at Macmillan, a video called “From the Typewriter to the Bookstore: A Publishing Story,” pokes gentle fun at the entire process of bookmaking, including editing—implying wht that process is now, by skewering the romantic view of how it once was. But, in passing, the video raises the question of whether there is a legitimate—or at least an active—role for an editor to take any longer.
Each of the books we publish here is edited and revised (as are all published novels—edited by someone). And my work behind Marc Estrin is, I realize, deeper in ways than many other a/e relationships. But that only brings this question into greater relief.
To undertake the perhaps pompous action of recommending a revision—that is, to see a novel as somehow a (somewhat) collaborative work—an editor must have a particular kind of ego: a strong, focused, but anonymous one.
With fiction an editor must stand in the emotional position of all readers—or at least of the largest group of readers that the author has chosen to address. Consider the assertions that such a stand entails: “I am Reader. I have read a great many books and know why the ones that work do work. Moreover, I know how most readers of a book like this unpublished one will respond to this or to that element within it. I see precisely when this manuscript soars and when it loses its way, what its actual trajectory is. And beyond this, I know how the art-form functions as a body, what works within it and what does not, what this art has been, is, can be, and likely will be.”
Of course this is an outrageous, indefensible position for any one reader to take. And yet we editors take it every day, and we do so with confidence (more often than not). Just as significant—and just as odd—we find a way to maintain that confidence even when reviewers dislike the resultant finished book (I could name a few of our own and am still holding a grudge against Aoibheann Sweeney) or when a novel we believe to be masterful is completely overlooked. (You want a list?)
This takes a faith in ourselves that we may well not have in any other endeavor realm of our lives. And, if there are few enough of us, it can be dangerous to the art, I suppose, but dangerous only if we do not also have humility. That is, editors can do good only if we are willing to lose editorial battles, to be vulnerable to suasion ourselves, to give the author recommendations not directives, to differentiate between editing and authoring.
Most of us have no trouble with these aspects of the vocation. The interesting thing in all of this, I think, is that the same assertions of self are made daily by agents and acquirers who decide what to take on and what to leave among the great unread. Book review editors take a similar stand for their narrower body of readers. And, indeed, an assertion of the self as pre-visionary of market and reader response is made by every bookstore buyer—with astoundingly far-reaching impact by the one or two people who select all of the books in all of the stores in each chain.
Editors and agents can take some reassurance in the fact that there are many houses and many more editors, many other agents. Chain buyers act within another realm of authority altogether. We don’t talk much about that, do we?
All of which is to say that to be an editor of fiction, one must constantly examine one’s own moment in the history of taste and one’s evolving inclinations within that history. An editor must examine that complex (if you will) with the same wide-field focus with which he or she sees the flow of text in the worlds the authors create.
Posted in: Publishers Blog, | Keywords: publishers blog
Previous Entry: Too much book for a Kindle? | Next Entry: The Fragility of Permanence
Comments
There are currently no comments for this entry yet.