this is a fascinating article. It’s a topic I’ve been “watching” for some time, one of the most interesting of discussions, of great personal interest to me … and the story just keeps going on.
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I’m firmly in the Lish-crossed-the-line-between-edit-and-write camp. Editors see how a story can be made better. The next step is to make suggestions. Lish could have written to Carver, “Ray, baby, where the girl says to her boyfriend, ‘They must be desperate or something’, wouldn’t it be better if she said it later to the old geezer himself like ‘You must be desperate or something’? Just a thought. blahblahblah explain yadayada.” Maybe Carver would have come up with an improvement on Lish’s improvement, and it would have been Carver’s, not Lish’s.
Also, love the Bruce Davison post.
Doc – it really is amazing to watch this whole thing unfold (Lish vs Carver, or whatever we want to call it). I’m looking forward to the Library of America Carver edition that they mention in the article – got it on Pre-order.
Wow, that is fascinating, utterly fascinating, I don’t know what to think about it but it’s certainly got me going. I had no idea.