From: Marc Aronson <75664.3110>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 09:00:30 -0400

The issue of editors and credit is a very tangled one, as is most clear to anyone who had a chance to read the New York Times Magazine of 8/9. It showed the difficult sorting out of authorship and "credit" between the author Raymond Carver and the editor Gordon Lish.
        The problem is this: without our authors and artists, we would have nothing to work on. They are the beginning and end of the creative act of making a book. But in the actual process of acquiring, shaping, line editing, designing, and marketing a book editors (text editors, art directors, copy editors) often play a very large part in shaping the work. It feels somehow dishonorable to claim credit for something which is, after all our job, and would not exist were it not for the authors. And yet it is true that we become deeply invested in the books, and at times so live within them that we are in effect creating them with the authors.
        In those moments, editing itself becomes a kind of creation. Then, an author's talent permits us to so totally enter a world that we see it with the author, and thus can sense where something doesn't fit. But it is an honor to have the chance, and to ask for anything but a freely given thanks is just not done.

Marc Aronson
(Henry Holt)
Received on Tue 11 Aug 1998 08:00:30 AM CDT