{"id":3004,"date":"2005-05-19T06:55:47","date_gmt":"2005-05-19T10:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2015-05-12T08:15:33","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T12:15:33","slug":"the-books-a-circle-of-quiet-madeleine-lengle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3004","title":{"rendered":"The Books: \u201cA Circle of Quiet\u201d (Madeleine L\u2019Engle)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Next book in my Daily Book Excerpt:<\/p>\n

\"CircleOfQuiet.jpg\"I keep all of L’Engle’s books together … but the next book is no longer strictly a religious book … It’s the beginning of her “memoir” series – The Crosswicks Journals: A Circle of Quiet<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, by Madeleine L’Engle.<\/p>\n

Madeleine L’Engle has four books out in a series that she calls The Crosswicks Journal, and Circle of Quiet<\/i> is Part 1 of that series. Crosswicks is her house in Connecticut. The book is kind of a jumble of her thoughts, reminiscinces, memories … It’s also a bit biographical, of course – but she writes movingly about her journey towards being the writer she is today. I am always moved when I read about the 10 year period of rejection slips. She wrote and wrote and wrote for 10 years – 10 YEARS – with no success. It was not easy. She speaks of wanting to give up many many times. Finally, she had written this old book called Wrinkle in Time<\/i> – but publisher after publisher rejected it. It was too odd, too unclassifiable … could this be a children’s book? No. No. No. No. Finally – a brave publisher (Farrar, Straus Giroux) accepted it. They took a chance. The book, obviously became a runaway success, winning every medal in sight, and launched Madeleine’s career as a well-known and beloved author. She had written and published books before Wrinkle<\/i>, but they didn’t really have an impact. They’re good books, I’ve read them all … but Wrinkle<\/i> is extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Anyway, enough preamble. The following excerpt talks about her struggles with the copyeditors working on Wrinkle<\/i>, who kept trying to iron out her punctuation, “correcting” certain things that were very deliberate on Madeleine’s part.<\/p>\n

(I guess I didn’t realize that “grey” was the English spelling. I have always spelled the word that way, and for exactly the same reasons. As a person who loves rainy days, and loves foggy days on the beach … “grey” calls up those images. “Gray” calls up concrete, cement. So I always use “grey”.)<\/p>\n


\nEXCERPT FROM A Circle of Quiet<\/a>\"\" <\/i>, by Madeleine L’Engle. <\/b><\/p>\n

Copy editors, except the present one at FS&G, who is an artist herself, are apt to monkey around with punctuation. You have to watch them like a hawk.<\/p>\n

When A Wrinkle in Time<\/i> went into galleys, the copy editor — I’m glad I haven’t the faintest idea who it was — had him\/herself a ball. First of all, I do spell the English way; I was in an English boarding school when I was twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, and these are the years when spelling gets set. After I had been made to write h-o-n-o-u-r, for instance, a hundred times on a blackboard several hundred times, it was almost impossible for me to spell it h-o-n-o-r. The English use t-o-w-a-r-d-s and we use t-o-w-a-r-d. I like to use them both, depending on the rhythm of the sentence and the letter which begins the following word; sometimes the s<\/i> is needed; sometimes not: this is, I realize, rather erratic, and I can’t blame the copy editor who tries to talk me out of it. Then there’s grey<\/i>, which is English, and one very definite, bird-wing, ocean-wave color to me; and gray<\/i>, which is American, and a flatter, more metallic color. Then there are the c<\/i> and s<\/i> words, such as practice or practise. Abour words like these I’m simply in a state of confusion, rather than aesthetic persuasion, as with grey<\/i> or towards<\/i>, and the copy editor can have his way. On the whole I tell the copy editor to go ahead and make the spelling American, but don’t muck around with the punctuation.<\/p>\n

The worst thing the copy editor did with A Wrinkle in Time<\/i> was with the three strange Mrs Ws. Now, Mr and Mrs are usually spelled Mr and Mrs in England, and Mr. and Mrs. in America. Usually I spell them the American way, or try to remember to. But the Mrs W were extra-special as well as extra-terrestrial, and I very deliberately did not put the period after their Mrs’s. With Mr. and Mrs. Murry, who, scientists or no, were solid earth folk, I did put in the period. It was important to me. It was, I should have thought, obvious that it was done with forethought, but the copy editor went through the manuscript and put a period after every Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which.<\/p>\n

When I got the galleys I was appalled. I called my editor and told him what had happened. He was sorry, though certainly it was not a matter of vital import to him, as it was to me. He said, “If you insist, we’ll take the periods out, but it will cost a fortune.” If I insisted I would be acting like an impossible and temperamental author (I am convinced that I am the most gentle, pliable, easily managed author-wife-mother who ever walked the earth), and my editors would not be pleased. And they were taking a risk on a book that almost every other publisher in the business had turned down, and I was more than grateful. So I didn’t insist. But it bothered me (and it still does).<\/p>\n

When the book was done in England, at last I was able to get the punctuation the way I wanted it: joy! though (temperamental author again?) I wasn’t wholly satisfied on two counts: the publishers thought the book was too long for English children, and a few cuts were made; they weren’t disastrous, but I think they shouldn’t have been made; everything that could be cut had already been cut out before the original publication. Then, I was asked if I would mind if the setting of the story were identified as being in America. I replied that I didn’t think it was very important, but if they felt it to be essential, go ahead.<\/p>\n

The first sentence of the book is very carefully and deliberately that old war-horse:<\/p>\n

It was a dark and stormy night.<\/p>\n

Period. End of sentence. End of paragraph.<\/p>\n

The English edition begins, “It was a dark and stormy night in a small village in the United States.”<\/p>\n

I was naturally delighted when Penguin Publications decided to make a Puffin book out of it. But lo, the Puffin copy editor took the periods out after Mr. and Mrs. Murry, too.<\/p>\n

Ah, well.<\/p>\n

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