Editing is Only Good If the Editing is Good and a Lot of Editing is Not Good
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Maxwell Perkins
13 min read
The legendary editor who worked with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe represents the mythologized ideal of 'The Editor' that the article critiques - understanding his actual editorial relationships reveals both the value and the romanticization of editing
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Daniel Dennett
17 min read
The article explicitly uses this term coined by Daniel Dennett to describe the phrase 'this could use an editor' - understanding the philosophical concept of statements that seem profound but are actually trivial illuminates the article's central argument
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Gordon Lish
15 min read
The controversial editor famous for heavily cutting Raymond Carver's work exemplifies the article's point that editing is not inherently good - Lish's aggressive style sparked debates about whether his edits improved or diminished Carver's voice
In a piece reflecting on the new Maggie Nelson book about Taylor Swift and Sylvia Plath, BDM discusses one of the most tiresome cliches in this business:
when people call for an editor for a specific piece of work or say something like “if this was a student paper, I’d…” rhetorically what they’re doing is refusing to acknowledge somebody as a peer. The statement is, you are still a student, you are still learning, you cannot trust your instincts, you have to be curbed and taught before you can be trusted to be doing something on purpose. I say all this as somebody who was an editor and who values editors and who has had her work improved by editors; most people benefit from collaboration and I certainly do. But that’s not the subtext of the statement that somebody “needs an editor.”
That’s quite right. “You/This could use an editor” is sometimes true, rarely kind, and very rarely actually helpful, and for the reasons BDM says - it’s almost never said with any sincerity, but as a way to big-time someone, to assert their lack of professional stature. It’s the classic example of a piece of advice that potentially can serve a helpful purpose but almost never does in practice. For example! This piece in New York’s Book Gossip newsletter rounds up a lot of anonymous opinions from publishing industry insiders. This is, unsurprisingly, an annoying exercise; publishing is not quite as dominated by insiderism and clubbiness as news media, but it’s close. And that collection of pithy little insults showcases several instances of exactly what BDM describes, the use of “could use an editor” as a vague and condescending pejorative. This is, of course, a matter of people who work in a threatened industry that’s built on gatekeeping throwing a little condescension towards people who work outside of that industry. That editing is indeed often invaluable and that many writers could stand to receive more of it doesn’t change the fact that anonymous publishing bigwigs saying so isn’t constructive and isn’t intended to be. I hate when insult masquerades as advice.
Variations on “this person could really use an editor” are the most tiresome phrases in the contemporary critical lexicon. It’s an empty move that’s regularly pulled out by people who know nothing about good writing, deployed in exactly the way BDM alleges, as a way to
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