Editors. Pink Elephants. Enivrez-Vous.

More thoughts about editors…

Involved with any text are three individuals, who are sometimes the same and sometimes very different: a writer, a reader, and an editor.

Each of the three has an equal but different claim upon the piece in question. The writer wants to express something unique to his or her own intellect. The reader wants to hear something which impacts directly on his or her experience of the world, or lack thereof.

The editor…and again, remember, I was one…is an equal partner of the other two, but the least honest of the three. The editor believes, or pretends to believe that he or she knows what the author should be saying and what the reader should want to hear, even though they may have quite different ideas about their preferences.

In fact, of course, this is a carefully planned exercise in self-delusion. The editor has no clearer idea of what ought be written or read than anyone else. But that is in no way to suggest that the editor is valueless. Quite the reverse. Delusion is vital to creation. It adds a note of chaos to a situation that might otherwise be crippled by its own perfection.

Thus the real purpose of the editor. Not to smooth but to roughen. Not to confirm but to confuse. Not to clarify but to intoxicate. To be, in other words, the White Rabbit. The Green Fairy. The Pink Elephant.

Enivrez-Vous.

a million monkeys

You're recall I'm writing a book on American travel. One of the things which troubles me about the process is that my agent has put me to work with a young editor.

This is new for me. I have worked with editors before, but not one employed by an agent. It seems that in the new world of modern book publishing, the publishing company doesn't do much editing. In fact, I'm told that it does very little other than purchase the right to distribute a document that is largely already (as we used to say) "camera ready," that is, ready to go directly to the press.

The model now seems to be rather like that of the movie industry, where "movie companies" basically don't make movies. Rather, they obtain the rights to films that have been produced, created, and even financed by other firms.

I'm not sure this is a good thing. What does it say about us that the corporations that, in theory, determine our literature could (in theory) actually be staffed entirely by illiterates? Or the proverbial million monkeys, picking manuscripts at random?