Carved up, or kindly cut?

James Ley investigates secret editors' business

DISCUSSED:

Beginners
By Raymond Carver
Jonathan Cape, 244pp, $34.95

That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.

I go, "Holly, this can't continue. This has got to stop."

ADMIRERS of American literature may recognise these arresting opening lines from Gazebo, one of the 17 short stories in Raymond Carver's celebrated collection, What We Talk about When We Talk about Love (1981). Many of Carver's alcohol-soaked tales of domestic disharmony have become modern classics. In the five volumes of fiction he published during his lifetime, he developed a style that is often imitated but rarely equalled, staking out his literary territory so decisively that he regularly receives the writerly honour of having his name transformed into an adjective: Carveresque.

Though he disliked the term minimalism and his later collections, Cathedral (1983) and Elephant and Other Stories (1988), saw him consciously moving away from the concision of his earlier work, it is What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, his breakthrough book, that epitomises the qualities most commonly associated with his writing: a honed elliptical style, precise yet demotic, that combines a Hemingway-like terseness with a potent sense of Chekhovian disquiet.

It has long been an open secret that Carver's early stories were heavily edited. For What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, he was paired with Gordon Lish, a fiction writer who had worked on Carver's earlier collection Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976). Lish set about imposing a ruthless discipline on the manuscript. He stripped back the prose. He made substantial cuts and revisions to many of the stories. When he was done, the book was almost 50 per cent shorter than the version Carver had submitted.

Carver was taken aback and somewhat unnerved when he saw the extent of the transformation. He was troubled by a conflicting sense that his stories had been fashioned into something extraordinary, that a powerfully resonant quality had been drawn out in the editorial process, but also that his creation had been taken out of his hands. The extent of his unease was made public 10 years after his death in a long article by D. T. Max published in The New York Times in 1998. Max interviewed Lish, consulted the original manuscripts and Carver's correspondence, and revealed that Lish's interventions were sometimes presumptuous enough to suggest that a form of artistic appropriation had taken place.

The decision of Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, to publish the pre-edited versions of the stories in What We Talk about When We Talk about Love under Carver's original title, Beginners (Jonathan Cape, 244pp, $34.95), has made it possible to see the extent of the transformation, to identify the specific changes that Lish made. Here, for example, is how Carver originally began Gazebo:

That morning she pours Teacher's scotch over my belly and licks it off. In the afternoon she tries to jump out the window. I can't stand this any more, and I tell her so. I go, "Holly, this can't continue. This is crazy. This has got to stop."

The alterations to these lines are small but definitive. Lish removes the element of overelaboration, though one redundancy ("this can't continue. This has got to stop.") is retained to imply the desperation that the original version makes explicit. The dramatic juxtaposition of the first two sentences is emphasised by the introduction of a repetition ("That morning . . . That afternoon"). The subtle aesthetic decision is made to prefer the brand name, Teacher's, ahead of the generic name, scotch.

These are the kind of changes that one might expect an editor to make. They sharpen what is already on the page, draw out its essence. The unedited version is good; the edited version is better. But Lish often goes much further, appearing at times to override or alter Carver's intentions. When Carver writes a paragraph of physical description and it is pared back to a single detail -- a pair of earrings -- Lish can seem to be making a creative decision and not merely an editorial one. There are sentences in Lish's versions of the stories that do not appear in Carver's; characters' names and titles have been changed; details have been embellished.

In Pie, which Lish renamed A Serious Talk, a man named Burt visits his estranged family on Christmas Day and walks out with a stack of pies, one of which he drops in the driveway. In Lish's version, the splattered pie becomes "a halo of pumpkin". In Carver's version, Burt's daughter sets the table, placing at its centre a "slender vase with a single red rose"; in Lish's version, the same moment is evocatively drawn out: "He watched her put a slender vase in the middle of the table. He watched her lower a flower into the vase, doing it ever so carefully."

Most drastically, Lish often truncates or rewrites endings. In the title story, for example, two couples sit around a kitchen table drinking and talking about their loves and failed relationships. At the end of Carver's version, the gruff guy who has been doing most of the talking, Herb (Lish renamed him Mel), wanders off to take a shower. His wife then bursts into tears and confesses to the younger couple that Herb has been talking about committing suicide. Lish cut this melodramatic flourish, leaving the four characters still seated around the table as the light fades, the tensions in the older couple's relationship implied but not stated. It is not an exaggeration to say that Lish's version almost qualifies as a different story, and a superior one.

Yet it is not necessarily the case that Lish's interventions are always for the better. In the story Tell the Women We're Going, two old friends say goodbye to their wives and head out drinking on a Sunday afternoon. They encounter two teenage girls and, when the girls reject their advances, the men follow them. The story ends with the girls being raped and murdered. Lish's eviscerated version makes this ending so abrupt as to be almost abstract, but Carver was reaching for a more complex understanding of the men's misogyny. In the version in Beginners, we are led through a series of increasingly tense stages as Jerry, the more aggressive of the two men, becomes more frustrated and angry in his pursuit of the girls, culminating in the final moment of violence, graphically described. In this case, the story's steadily building suspense seems better served by the greater length and explicitness of the original.

Lish consistently favours fragmentation and implication ahead of narrative detail. He prefers objectivity to interiority, eliminating lengthy passages that make characters' thoughts explicit. He tones down or eliminates anything that might seem overly dramatic or emotive and likes to leave a narrative poised at an ambiguous moment, where Carver is often more willing to allow a story to arrive at a more conventional sense of resolution.

And it is this imposition of what would seem to be clear aesthetic preferences with minimal consultation that makes the Carver-Lish relationship so fascinating and contentious. Lish seems to have crossed a line, but what is the line? How does the professional collaboration between writer and editor work? How should it?

THE relationship between writer and editor is not one that admits of easy generalisation. Marian McCarthy, who has worked as an editor for Bloomsbury in Britain and now lives and works in Australia as a freelancer, observes that "every author is different; every book is different". The case of Carver and Lish is exceptional in many respects. It is unusual for the level of praise and attention Carver's stories have subsequently attracted and for the extent to which Lish seems to have imposed his will on them.

But perhaps the most unusual aspect is that it became public. While there are some famous cases of editorial intervention -- Ezra Pound's radical surgery on T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, for example -- most of the time the editing process remains hidden and unconsidered.

Michael Heyward, publisher at Text, compares the working relationship between an editor and a writer to that between confessor and priest: it is "definitionally secret, not discussable". Penguin editor Meredith Rose, who has worked with writers such as Peter Goldsworthy and Nam Le, says "the only two people who really know what happens in the editing process are the writer and the editor".

As novelist Delia Falconer points out, this uncertainty about what goes on behind closed doors means it can be perilous to make assumptions: "When you read a book, you have no idea how much of the editor's advice the writer used, or how they used it. I'm good friends with a few editors and have certainly seen them take the rap from critics for poor editing, when I know the writer has ignored their advice completely; or, on the other hand, sometimes editors have worked madly to make a very poor book just publishable or readable, and the writer gets the credit from the critic."

Ask fiction writers about the editorial process and they tend to speak favourably of their experiences. Writers are intensely involved in their work and often appreciate an editor's ability to approach a manuscript disinterestedly. For Goldsworthy, the ideal editor acts as "a more objective self, or twin -- that is, me, but not so close to the work". Falconer praises her editor as "the scrupulous person, the professional friend who'll give me an absolutely honest, clear-eyed assessment of my book". Garry Disher, who has written more than 40 books in a variety of genres, turns to his editor when the manuscript is all but complete, but "the words are swimming, I have tunnel vision and have lost my critical edge. I rely on a good editor to come to the manuscript with a fresh eye and see where it's misshapen, too long, lacking, rough at the edges, too finely wrought, and so on."

On the other side of the relationship, editors stress the importance of understanding and respecting their authors' intentions. Ivor Indyk, publisher at Giramondo and editor of writers as stylistically diverse as Alexis Wright and Gerald Murnane, observes that editors "need to be capable of self-effacement". The editing process involves a form of creative sympathy with the writing: "I tune in to the writing -- it's a certain kind of attentiveness, I think. I'm listening for the rhythm, the voice; they're probably the same thing. When it falters, or becomes indistinct, or loses energy, I interrupt to say so, or if it's easy to see what is wrong, to suggest how it might be made right."

For Heyward, editing is "the purest form of criticism: it tries to understand style by enacting it". He sees no problem with an editor suggesting plot possibilities or a new ending. What matters is "the quality of the conversation". Sometimes "the writer writes X, the editor suggests Y, but the solution might be Z". The final decision always rests with the author, to whom the editor remains subservient. Ultimately, the editor "edits himself out of existence".

"I almost never rewrite for my authors beyond restructuring sentences or suggesting a word change here and there," Scribe editor Aviva Tuffield says. "To write a whole new paragraph for a novelist would be anathema to me: it's the author's work of fiction and they know their story and characters in a way that only they can, so I can only work within certain parameters. I will make suggestions for changes and rewrites but rarely insist on them. I have never reached a complete impasse with an author. Most times writers are thrilled to have someone engage so closely with their work."

Of course, things do not always run smoothly. In her memoir, Other People's Words (2001), Hilary McPhee describes her time with McPhee-Gribble, the independent publishing house she co-founded in the 1970s with "an ethos rather than a profit motive, an idea rather than a money-making venture" and which went on to publish the likes of Tim Winton and Helen Garner.

"The writing and editing time," McPhee writes, "is always intense and potentially fraught with misunderstandings and sensitivities." Learning to become an editor involved coming to appreciate "something of the anxieties and uncertainties that plague most authors", but also finding ways to deal with difficult writers. There were the self-declared geniuses (invariably men, she notes) and the novelist who submitted her manuscript, which she declared to be flawless, with each individual page in its own plastic sleeve. "There was the occasional person whose ego raged out of control -- `Don't touch a comma' -- but their opposite number -- `You fix it for me' -- also needed careful handling."

Ideally, the interaction between editor and writer should be based on trust. "For the shared enterprise to properly work it needs to be underpinned by mutual respect," observes novelist Lloyd Jones. "There is no place for ego or stamping of feet." Short story writer and novelist Cate Kennedy, who is edited by Tuffield, remembers being burned by poor editing early in her career and being "too inexperienced, acquiescent and timid to protest". At its best, she argues, editing "should be more like mentoring -- the right question asked will make me respond and articulate why I've done something the way I have, and lead me to a clearer direction".

The two most valuable comments a writer can hear, she suggests, are "I don't get this bit" and "You don't need that".

As Allen & Unwin editor Jane Palfreyman observes, the passages an editor identifies as needing more work "are more often than not already niggling away at the writer who senses it wasn't quite nailed the first time around". The interaction can be almost like a talking cure, Falconer says: "The idea that to name a problem is to be halfway towards fixing it."

In A Certain Style (2001), her biography of the influential Angus & Robertson editor Beatrice Davis, Jacqueline Kent recalls a time when Australian publishing was a very different industry:

It now seems almost beyond belief that in Beatrice's heyday a manuscript was given all the time, care and attention the editor thought it required. In its lack of urgency about scheduling, its painstaking and careful devotion to the written word, Angus & Robertson was more like an old-fashioned university arts department than a modern commercial publishing company.

Many of the changes that have taken place since Davis's heyday in the 1950s are undeniably for the better. The market for Australian fiction is considerably larger. The local publishing industry is better established, more diverse, and more competitive. Yet commercial realities have also meant that the seemingly idyllic conditions under which Davis worked have not survived. One hears much that is encouraging and positive, but one also encounters an undercurrent of discontent: complaints that publishers only seem willing to take on manuscripts that require minimal editing; concern that books are making it into print without receiving the kind of close attention they need; rueful head-shaking about that recent Australian novel that was "so close to being brilliant, but baggy".

"I think anyone who tells you books are as carefully or rigorously edited as they were a generation ago is either lying or deluding themselves," novelist James Bradley says.

"That's not a reflection on the quality of the editors, many of whom are very good, it's simply the result of the changing economics of the industry, and in particular the shift towards freelance editors, paid by the hour."

It is, Bradley argues, a "vibrant time for Australian writing" and the standard of books being published by independents and multinationals remains high, but the issue is what the changing structure of publishing means for the levels of feedback and support authors receive, particularly as the nexus between writing and publishing becomes closer. "We're already seeing a situation where literary work is migrating to smaller, independent publishers, who are prepared to take risks and make investments of time and energy the big publishers can't, but that process is only going to accelerate in the months and years to come, as is the growing number of authors who choose to step outside the existing model and publish themselves."

Bradley suggests a balance needs to be struck between commercial imperatives and creative interests: "A publisher once said to me that in business terms, editing was a process of diminishing returns: while you can always spend more, there comes a point where spending another 20 per cent won't make the book 20 per cent better. That's always seemed a very useful way to look at things, because it reframes the question as one about when publishers are getting the best return on their money rather than an unwinnable debate about editorial and literary standards."

Again, it can be hazardous to make generalisations. Across the publishing industry lines of demarcation are not necessarily stable or consistent. Michael Williams, who has worked as an in-house editor with Text and as a freelancer, makes the point that, when it comes to editing, each publishing house tends to have its own philosophy and that roles can be fluid: sometimes it will be the publisher who acts as a mentor, providing detailed editorial advice, while the business of line-editing and proofing is delegated to freelancers.

Writers often seek editorial advice from a variety of sources. Goldsworthy notes that family members are often the first editors of an author's work; while novelist Carrie Tiffany stresses the importance of having a supportive agent to provide feedback and help negotiate the intensive process of bringing a manuscript to publication. Having her first novel, Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living (2005), rejected by every big Australian publisher ("They all said the same thing: it was well-written but wouldn't sell"), only to find it in demand after she won a Victorian Premier's Award for an unpublished manuscript, made Tiffany wary of the commercial side of the industry. The initial 20 hours of editing she received as part of her prize was an experience that she found encouraging because it was independent and she could be confident the manuscript was receiving "not a commercial reading, but a true reading, a true response".

There is a degree of concern among writers and editors that, in the highly competitive environment of contemporary publishing, the value of thorough professional editing tends to be underappreciated.

McCarthy believes that in many publishing houses a belief in the importance of in-house editorial support has largely fallen by the wayside. When she left Bloomsbury in 2002, the commitment to editorial values was increasingly under pressure from sales and marketing, which came to influence decisions about whether or not to publish. Many publishers, she suggests, now have a short-term mentality and "little interest in growing talent".

Disher feels he is fortunate to have worked with good editors over the course of his career, including Williams, but "the system's not perfect. Editors are poorly paid, their status is low. Also, economic rationalism has meant that many of the big multinational publishers allow their editors only a very brief turnaround period on each book, maybe as little as three or four days, when it should take much longer to give a manuscript a careful reading, construct a helpful, considered response, and then work through it with the author."

Jones, who is published by Text, believes that the situation varies from publisher to publisher and country to country, but his impression is "that multinational publishers don't take the same time or care as the smaller and committed independents. They lack the time, money or inclination that good editing requires."

"What's undeniable," observes Rose, "is that workloads have got heavier, schedules tighter, expectations higher. Shareholders expect a bigger profit each year, and in the digital global world people get used to instant everything. Yet there's not much that technology can shave from editorial costs. It can't do anything to speed up serious thinking time, or careful attention or the generation of ideas. So I find myself working a little harder every year, but I suspect we all are, whatever our industry."

To the question of whether the quantity of in-house editing has declined in recent decades, Palfreyman responds: "Possibly, especially in the bigger houses and in the case of line editing, but that has coincided with the burgeoning of many talented and experienced freelance editors. A lot of editorial work is now undertaken on a freelance basis."

She agrees that commercial pressures have become more significant: "What has become prevalent in many companies is the belief of business managers that all books are basically units that can be handled the same way with the same kinds of budgets and time constraints. Fiction and creative nonfiction just doesn't work like that; those books need time and editorial care." She points out the editorial process can sometimes be limited by authors who are "dying to get the book off their desk and published", though she states that "the buck stops with the publisher. If the company you work for isn't giving you the time and money to bring the best possible books into the market, and you can't change that, you're working for the wrong company."

Broadly speaking, Palfreyman believes editorial standards and levels of author satisfaction remain high: "Every few years there is a `sky is falling' reaction in the media about literary editing. Perhaps that will happen as a result of [this] article. I can only say that from where I'm sitting at A&U, it's very healthy."

There remains among editors a strong dedication to professionalism. Heyward, who is both a publisher and an editor, argues that the two roles should be complementary. One contains the other: it is the responsibility of the publisher to create the conditions in which an editor can do their job well. He points out that in the recent debate about proposed changes to parallel importation laws there was almost no discussion of the potential impact on editorial opportunities and stresses that one-third of Text's staff are editors. It does not outsource and encourages a view of editing as a vocation. The use of freelancers is, he argues, a false economy: in-house editing is the guarantee of quality and "well-edited books have the best chance of selling well".

Though it is modish to reach for a narrative of decline, this does not necessarily reflect reality: "I have yet to read an article which says that some of the best editing in the English language is done in Australia, but I believe it's true."

Tuffield, too, points out that Scribe employs more editors than before and does not outsource to freelancers. The only limitation placed on the amount of editing a manuscript receives is the publication deadline, "but if a book isn't ready we will delay publication. There is no point in rushing things, or sending a book out into the world that still needs more work. You only get one shot in the marketplace and we are dealing with writers' long-term careers.

"I know many committed editors," she says, "and we all do our jobs for the love of writing and good fiction. If we wanted to make more money we could edit corporate reports." Rose agrees: "There's an enormous level of interest in and enthusiasm and commitment for the craft of fiction editing on the part of a large number of intelligent and creative people, who are working their hearts out in pressured circumstances."

CARVER'S talent was more than vindicated in the many great stories he went on to write after he broke with Lish, stories in which he developed a denser and more elaborate style of writing. His stature is in no way diminished by the unedited stories in Beginners, which are certainly rawer and baggier than the edited versions, but not at all artless or unsophisticated.

Yet even great writers benefit from the close attention Lish gave to Carver's work. "I've seen Lish's edit of the title story online and think there's no doubt the original was in need of editing," Rose says, adding that "plenty of writers finesse their short stories from one volume to the next. I like the idea of there being different versions, like different mixes of a song. There's no law that says a written work has to remain fixed."

And in the end, as Jones points out, it is the quality of the finished product that counts. "There is virtually no Thomas Wolfe without Maxwell Perkins," he observes, referring to the American editor who mentored F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, and whose job it was to assemble a coherent book from the voluminous but disordered mass of writing that Wolfe was apt to deliver to his publisher. "Lish broke the rules or crossed the line, whichever way you want to put it, and something marvellous resulted. How you might feel about this may come down to what you choose to focus on, the process or the end result. Those stories don't suffer a bit for our knowledge of Lish's rewriting or vigorous editing. The stories are what they are. They are what we are left with. And that is the basis on which to judge them."