Who Was the Real Raymond Carver?
The London Times looks at the late, legendary short story writer Raymond Carver's storied career. It's pretty well documented now that his editor, Gordon Lish, was much more than a mere editor for him, acting more like a co-writer. Have you ever worked with someone like that, who wanted to tear up all your work and redo it themselves? Or perhaps you were that editor. If so, we'd love to hear your thoughts, on this example, on yours, or any other you care to share.
11 Comments:
I worked with a couple like that. One tried to impose his more wordy style on my leaner one. The other apparently felt that to really edit, one had to change something--whether or not it needed changing.
Mike, you've nicely described how all bad editors (and insecure people) try to do it. But there are plenty of examples of great collaborations also. I'd love to hear about some of those as well.
The classic example is what Pound did for Eliot's "The Wasteland," which became clear when the facsimile manuscript edition was published in the 1970s. Pound completely changed the poem, with Eliot's apparent approval, making it much richer and stronger than it had been before. Remember, before this, Eliot hadn't yet broken free of the blank verse meters of "Prufrock" et al.
Rewriting, or "writing through" to use John Cage's terminology, was something that happened all the time in the monthly writer's group that I attended for some years in Minneapolis. (Every one has since moved on, or just moved, by now.) It was led by a transplant from New York, and our technique was to give honest crit, rather than support-group crit. You handed out copies of your poem, and pretty much everyone wrote on them, then handed them back. You also read the piece out loud, then people went around to give feedback. The people in that group were exceptional in their critique, and I learned how to critique from that group. You were often given painfully honest responses yet it was always made clear that the response was to the work, not the person. None of this defensiveness or ad hominem attack crap; we didn't tolerate any of that.
But you often got back critiques that were basically full rewrites. Then it's your choice as to what to do with the suggestions. You could incorporate all of them, or ignore them all, or a mix of those. I usually accepted those rewrites that made sense to me, and ignored those that were off-target. In the case of the guy who led the group, he actively rewrote two or three of my poems, using what I had presented but not adding anything, mostly just rearranging and selecting, and made them much better, and I went with that.
But then over time I learned to do that for myself, in my own rewrites, and he ended up making fewer suggestions as time went by. I pretty much internalized all the ideas we worked with in that writer's group, and applied them to the online poetry boards I used to participate in (but not any more), and I still apply what I learned during my own rewrites. I've found however that once one's own inner compass is tuned and trustworthy, you can rely less on the feedback of others, and trust your own instincts more. Sure, that might risk taking you down a dead-end for awhile; on the other hand, if you're always and forever reliant on others for all things at all times, you also never learn from your mistakes, you just repeat them.
As a working graphic artist, I learned many years ago that when you're doing a production art gig for an art director, there are a lot of non-creative art directors who really have nothing to add to your work, to improve upon it, but they have to still make one tiny change—like a dog pissing on a fence, to mark its turf—just to justify their existence and their higher-than-thou salaries. I've worked with many art directors and editors like that. Mostly you just let them have their little pissing moment, then go back and undo about half of their really stupid changes, then turn the work in. Usually no one ever noticed that I'd undone the really stupid pissing changes, and everybody was happy.
The best art directors and editors that I have worked with, by contrast, were the ones who guided you and made suggestions that did improve the piece, but they let you do the work and when it was done, they didn't feel the need to change anything further. You
That last paragraph is what it's all about. But of course it often takes some time (sometime years) for two people to work together before they can collaborate so smoothly. But when it happens, it's sublime. It's like you're speaking in shorthand.
"...who wanted to tear up all your work and redo it themselves?"
I must say that I have to fight this urge with my son's papers in junior high school. And yet having good teachers do the same to my work in college really did help me a lot. So, it's a fine line I must walk. My son loves to write (yes!), but he doesn't like to follow directions for the assignment. I've told him that the goal is not just to fill up the paper....
There is no editor who has deigned to take on my work. I wish continued good luck to your readers. About workshops I attend, I appreciate what I hear and rarely change my own trials.
Yes, Pat, dealing with kids' writing is indeed a whole different thing, and certainly all the more so when they're our own. And thanks for stopping by, sevnetus.
I taught a writing workshop to homeschooled middle school students a few years back, and they absolutely loved it. Sometimes I gave them subjects to write about, and sometimes I let them pick. And I made them keep a journal.
It was a great time. None of this "make sure you have five sentences in a paragraph" and "don't start your sentences with 'and' or 'but'" stuff. They were writing, not counting beans. They put their thoughts down on paper, and then I helped them with the structure.
Now that I'm thinking of it, maybe I'll hold another workshop.
I hope you do, Pat. This is a great example of why I think it's a waste of time for non-writers to teach writing (as most English teachers do). You have to understand how to do it yourself (including how to induce interest in others) before you can transmit it to anyone. Command and control doesn't work, but as you note, that's not to say there isn't structure to it.
I am blessed to be in a writing group whose members seem equally skilled and there is no one "expert", but one of my most vivid memories of high school was an art teacher who corrected your paintings by painting on them!!! very discouraging.
Oh, man. Sadly, we've all had doofuses like those, haven't we? Let's hope there are fewer of these kinds of grossly incompetent teachers in the classroom today than when we were kids. Just glad he or she wasn't successful in extinguishing your creative impulse.
As to the writing group, I think you're being modest, because I believe you happened to initiate that group yourself. So you may be at least the nominal leader, based (I'm guessing) on the way people react to your incredible writing, including other writers. But your larger point is a good one: that these groups often work best when they're more collaborative than based on a teacher/student dynamic. That can sometimes be a bit chaotic, but the groups that ultimately survive tend to find a way to deal with pure democracy.
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