Althouse: "She said, 'It’s coruscating, Nicholas!'... I nodded sagely and had no idea what she meant."

July 13, 2015

"She said, 'It’s coruscating, Nicholas!'... I nodded sagely and had no idea what she meant."

"After she finished her second martini, I had to run home and looked the word up myself."

She = Therese von Hohoff Torrey, AKA Tay Hohoff, the editor responsible for turning "Go Set a Watchman" into "To Kill a Mockingbird."

I = Nicholas Delbanco, whose novel "Grasse 3/23/66" was cut by Hohoff from 500 pages to 200.

From "The Invisible Hand Behind Harper Lee’s 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'"

52 comments:

Jaq said...: Huckleberry Finn was edited in the same way. Supposedly Clemens' editor would cut scenes out of it that we just completely off point of what the editor saw as the narrative arc of the novel.

Maybe what these novels needed was an authentic voice like Lee's or that of Clemens, with a vision that was not possible from a writer within the tradition they were writing about imposed from the outside.

If you read To Kill a Mockingbird, some of the scenes border on minstrel show type 'humor.' "When a [expletive deleted] walked past Boo Radley's house, they would cross the street and whistle the whole way."; 7/13/15, 9:02 AM
Michael K said...: Of course she was a Progressive !; 7/13/15, 9:21 AM
Scott said...: I know very little about the insides of the publishing industry, so I don't know if editors like Tay Hohoff are employed there anymore. The web is a vast ballroom for words, a frenetic taxi dance where the profound and the stupid frenetically dance cheek-to-cheek. Or something. Anyway, could a Tay Hohoff provide enough value added to a publisher to justify her salary these days?; 7/13/15, 9:22 AM
Carol said...: Wait, are people really disturbed that a "bigoted" lawyer would still defend a black defendant accused of rape? I don't follow. But that has more verisimilitude than the original story.; 7/13/15, 9:26 AM
Hagar said...: So Harper Lee wrote of her memories of a smalltown Alabama lawyer speaking the language of his time and place in the 1930's. Quelle horreur!!!

And in the late 1950's a New York book editor with literary sense and an idea of where the wind is now blowing among the intellectual gentry, makes the author revise it into a minor literary gem.

Good for both of them, I would say.; 7/13/15, 9:27 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Scott said...

...could a Tay Hohoff provide enough value added to a publisher to justify her salary these days?

They could if they edited out your repetitive use of frenetic and dance.; 7/13/15, 9:28 AM
Scott said...: If you're predisposed not to get it, then you won't get it.; 7/13/15, 9:33 AM
Brando said...: Seems to me even a good writer needs a good editor, and when you have both you can get some real gems. Does anyone really think great literary works are pounded out on the first draft?; 7/13/15, 9:35 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Carol said...

Wait, are people really disturbed that a "bigoted" lawyer would still defend a black defendant accused of rape? I don't follow.

My wife ( an English teacher who loves To Kill a Mockingbird) is upset because they published a book that the author would not have wanted published. ( Of course the author wanted it published when she first wrote it. However, once TKaM was published then Go Set a Watchman would have needed to be rewritten to align the history of events and the character of Atticus. That rewrite was never done. ); 7/13/15, 9:38 AM
Jaq said...: Editors would provide us with more top level fiction, I think. But that is what movie makers do. "Do Rainbows Dream of Electric Sheep" becomes "Blade Runner."

The story doctors make tons of money still, in Hollywood. Now novels written by individual self declared artists serve the same purpose for Hollywood as a steamer trunk full of pages serve Theodore Dreiser's editor and publisher: a source of raw material.; 7/13/15, 9:39 AM
Big Mike said...: Oh, I loved that description: "He does not carry his liquor well, and there is a lot of it to carry." I can picture the man in my mind, right down to the color of his socks.; 7/13/15, 9:54 AM
Hagar said...: Actually, not having read "To Kill a Mockingbird," I do not know if it is even a minor literary gem.
It may all have been just a question of timing.; 7/13/15, 9:56 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: Maybe I'll like "Go Set a Watchman" better than "To Kill a Mockingbird," which I remember as cloying. (But perhaps that's unfair. It's been about 20 years since I've read it.); 7/13/15, 10:32 AM
Richard Lawrence Cohen said...: It's a matter of public record that Robert Gottlieb did it with Catch-22 and Gordon Lish did it with Raymond Carver's short stories. These days, they say, it's done a lot for MFA grads who've been recommended by their professors to the best agents who always sell to the best houses. Certain editors become known for tutoring their first-time novelists, without getting paid extra. These editors become quite prestigious. And this is one reason why the second novels often aren't nearly as good. The writers won't sit still for being edited anymore. A generation ago, Bret Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt were students in the same ultra-small tutorial taught by Joe McGinnis at Bennington. Rumors -- perhaps valid, perhaps not -- say he had a lot to do with improving their first novels, as well as obtaining publication for them (Ellis, in his Paris Review interview, is quite open about the latter fact). More recently, people say, it was done with The Help.; 7/13/15, 10:34 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: Not that I'll find out given that I have no plans to read "Go Set a Watchman" and don't understand why it seems that everyone else wants to read it. Without the editor and editing process, it's not a finished book. I doubt it will be very good. Publishing it seems rude to the author.

Was it Thomas Jefferson or one of his contemporaries who instructed his wife to burn his papers upon his death? I can understand that.; 7/13/15, 10:36 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: You see this phenomenon with movies. A director will turn out fantastic films while dealing with constant pushback from a producer or studio or some such. Then the director makes it, gets to do whatever he wants without anyone questioning him, and he turns out something terrible. (This is, of course, not a rule. There are exceptions.) Pushback forces a person to think through everything.; 7/13/15, 10:39 AM
MikeR said...: JK Rowling could certainly have used an editor for the later Harry Potter books. The books got longer and longer, endless badly done fight scenes, whole Horcrux idea made no sense. The entire fifth book didn't move the story line one iota.
I enjoyed them anyhow, but it was a shame. Everyone needs an editor.; 7/13/15, 10:43 AM
SteveR said...: I liked the movie, never read the book, don't care about "Go Set a Watchman".; 7/13/15, 10:43 AM
gspencer said...: Maybe we should refer to it all as the Killing of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Is that bird finally dead?; 7/13/15, 10:46 AM
Jaq said...: I am only about ten chapters in, but I am thinking that the bit about killing a mockingbird was a literal admonition to a boy with a slingshot, when written anyway.; 7/13/15, 10:50 AM
Deja Voodoo said...: Tim: Decker was an android; 7/13/15, 10:52 AM
MayBee said...: I love the way people are reading Go Set a Watchman and re-evaluating Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird as if he is real.

He isn't, people. You can have whatever opinion of him you want. You can choose the version of him you prefer. You know why? He didn't actually exist.; 7/13/15, 10:57 AM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/13/15, 10:59 AM
Saint Croix said...: One of the weird things about being a writer is how you control everything. If you want people to fly in your book, they can fly. You want to bring people back from the dead, you can do that. I think a lot of writers are quiet control freaks, who enjoy the power of the page. When you're a writer, it's as if you are a god. You can "fix" the world, or remake it. Or make it worse!

It was a bit of a culture shock to me, when I went to film school. All of a sudden you are not an artist working by yourself. You have to collaborate, with lots of artists. On a film you need a writer, a director, a producer, an editor, a musician, a photographer, and actors. You need to feed everybody. You need to get locations. It's like a collision course with reality.

It can be a disaster, collaboration. It can be heartbreaking and really painful, almost like a failed marriage. But when it works? When artists are on the same page, and united, and we see it the same way? It's amazing. It's a beautiful thing, a sort of sublime happiness.

So it does not surprise me that Harper Lee, on her own, is sub-par. We did not see the collaboration in To Kill A Mockingbird, because book editors (unlike film editors!) are anonymous. But obviously there was a collaboration going on, a beautiful thing. Reading Harper Lee without Tay Hohoff is like listening to Paul McCartney without John, without George, and without Ringo. It's like watching a Wes Anderson movie without Owen Wilson co-writing. It may be okay, or even good. But when artists unite, it's so much more powerful that what we accomplish on our own.; 7/13/15, 11:03 AM
khesanh0802 said...: @ Freeman Hunt George Washington was the guy.; 7/13/15, 11:07 AM
MayBee said...: I started to read Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James. People loved it, and love her, but I couldn't get past the idea that Elizabeth Bennett Darcy was not hers to write. She had no business ascribing motivations to her that Jane Austen did not.

Without the team who created the whole book, it's impossible to take the words on the pages as any more legitimate than what the original book placed in my imagination.

(Other examples, but with the same author, unlike the one above: The Devil Wears Prada was a very fun book. The sequel is horrible, and I completely reject the author's choices for the characters. The first two Bridget Jones books were also fun reads. The third is dreadful, and I couldn't even read the character as the same one. So I did not); 7/13/15, 11:08 AM
khesanh0802 said...: It seems to me that many books published today could benefit from significant intelligent editing, as well as proof reading!; 7/13/15, 11:09 AM
MayBee said...: (I'm agreeing with Freeman Hunt, here); 7/13/15, 11:10 AM
Paddy O said...: "Pushback forces a person to think through everything."

The (George) Lucas Effect.

Scarcity develops creativity. Excess results in Jar-Jar Binks.; 7/13/15, 11:13 AM
Robert Cook said...: Maybe Ridley Scott intended that Deckard be seen as an adroid in the movie--it might explain Harrison Ford's deadly stiff and morose portrayal of the character--but in the novel, not so much, or, at least, not so easy to really ascertain. In fact, the "android" in Philip K. Dick's work is often not so much a matter of the physical being--constructed person vs. biological person--but was an aspect of the being's capacity for empathy for other living things. Dick felt this was an aspect of being human, our capacity for empathy. This was the basis of the Voigt-Kampff empathy test administered to suspected androids; if their answers to the questions indicated a lack of empathy, it suggested they were androids and not human. This was why the humans remaining on earth paid high prices for (rare) living animals...as a way of marking their status--they had the money to afford real pets, as opposed to artificial pets--and as a way of expressing (displaying) their empathy. (I'm speaking of the book here; the only vestige of this in the film is the artifical snake the android snake dancer used in her act.)

The tricky thing in Dick's fiction is that androids could be more empathetic, more "human," than some humans, and humans more "android" than android. In short, "android" was Dick's sf analog for "sociopath." Dick was really writing about real life, in fantastic terms.

The book was far better than the movie, as is usually the case with adaptations.; 7/13/15, 11:14 AM
JackOfVA said...: Coruscating was a favorite word of E.E. "Doc" Smith, a writer of pulp science fiction in the 1920's and '30's.

Consider the following paragraph ... from Triplanetary (published originally as a four part serial Amazing Stories, Jan-Apr 1934.

Ultra-violet, infra-red, pure heat, infra-sound, solid beams of high-tension high-frequency current in whose paths the most stubborn metals would be volatilized instantly; all iron-driven, every deadly and torturing vibration known was hurled against that screen; but it, too, was iron-driven, and it held. Even the awful force of the macro-beam was dissipated by it--reflected, hurled away on all sides in coruscating torrents of blinding, dazzling energy. Cooper, Adlington, Spencer, and Dutton hurled against it their bombs and torpedoes--and still it held.; 7/13/15, 11:19 AM
T J Sawyer said...: "The New York Times published a story on July 2 describing these events in ways very different from how I remember them and in ways not reflecting the emails sent to me by Mr. Pinkus and Mr. Caldwell."

From How I Found the Harper Lee Manuscript - Much has been said lately about the discovery of ‘Go Set a Watchman’ and when it occurred. Here’s the full story.

In this morning's WSJ; 7/13/15, 11:20 AM
Static Ping said...: When I first saw "coruscating" I was trying to figure out how Star Wars fit into all this, given the Galactic Empire/Republic's capital was "Coruscant." Then Paddy O made it all clear. That and the missing "n", though I thought that might be a typo.

Hey, Paddy O, I was watching part of Lego Star Wars: Droid Tales this weekend and it was a glorious bit of bite the hand humor, at least the for the first five minutes. C-3PO is giving a summary of The Phantom Menace which results in the entire Star Wars main cast falling asleep when the droid mentions the tax dispute behind the story, and has Jar-Jar knocked into space and then deliberately blasted when he protests that he has an important role in the story. Joy!; 7/13/15, 11:48 AM
Michael K said...: Having written two (non-fiction) books, I think a writer really needs a knowledgeable reader to tell him/her what works and what doesn't. A lot of writers of fiction, which I would love to do but don't think I can, improve with later novels. It is rare, I think, for the first novel to be the best. Hemingway's wife, Hadley, lost his first novel manuscript. There has been speculation for years that it was probably for the best.; 7/13/15, 11:50 AM
MayBee said...: I'm excited for the third book where the heavily liberal Scout announces she is pro-open borders because she needs a cheap nanny and lawn care.; 7/13/15, 12:05 PM
amielalune said...: MayBee:

You think reading Death Comes to Pemberly was hard, do not try to sit through the movie. The most miscast movie I have ever seen. Elizabeth is a pruney-looking crone and Mr. Darcy is not remotely attractive.

I always wonder what these people were thinking.; 7/13/15, 12:19 PM
wildswan said...: Scout grew up to be a bitch - that is what you get out of Go Set A Watchman. But as others have pointed out this is a book. So don't read the prequel to To Kill A Mockingbird unless you are the kind of person who admires Wordsworth's poem, "The Excursion" and thinks it is the natural sequel to "Tintern Abbey."; 7/13/15, 12:29 PM
wildswan said...: I mean Go Set A Watchman is the prequel in terms of being the first version of To Kill a Mockingbird though it is the sequel to Scout's story in another sense. And the two together show what a liberal overlay does to a child's vision.

And as far as I am concerned Go Set A Watchman is shooting a mockingbird.; 7/13/15, 12:35 PM
Jaq said...: I suppose I should read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" at this point. I really do like Blade Runner and completely understand that it is not the same story, but a set of characters and situations drawn from it.

Speaking of Blade Runner, it is almost November of 2019, WHERE IS MY FLYING CAR?; 7/13/15, 12:37 PM
Jaq said...: Every description of the Electric Sheep book I have ever heard by anyone who read and loved it though made me want to read it less. Just sayin' But now I have commented publicly on it. Like James Taylor said in his song "Mexico" "I've never been there but now I'll have to go."; 7/13/15, 12:38 PM
sinz52 said...: Scott asks: "Anyway, could a Tay Hohoff provide enough value added to a publisher to justify her salary these days? "

No.
And that's why copyediting is a dying profession today.

The advent of self-publishing (pioneered by Amazon) is killing copyediting. Not only are major best-sellers (e.g., "Fifty Shades of Grey") self-published without copyediting, but commercial publishers are cutting back on copyediting to cut costs. (Probably to be more competitive with self-publishing)

"Fifty Shades of Grey" is chock-full of grammatical errors, usage errors, and just plain bad writing. But the lesson is clear: Readers don't care.; 7/13/15, 1:05 PM
Fritz said...: Piers Anthony once wrote a whole book about the way one his books had been abused by editors.

http://planetpeschel.com/2009/06/piers-anthonys-revenge-1975/; 7/13/15, 1:20 PM
Jaq said...: She has a third novel!

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/13/harper-lee-third-novel-lawyer-tonja-carter?CMP=edit_2221

Good for her heirs.; 7/13/15, 1:51 PM
traditionalguy said...: I have a granddaughter who is coruscating all of the time.; 7/13/15, 2:26 PM
Saint Croix said...: The (George) Lucas Effect.

I said this in my review of Phantom Menace:

Lucas is interesting on the subject of righteous anger. He would argue there is no such thing. Anger is always bad. Anger is the path to the dark side. So he identifies controlling your emotions as one of the most important things you can do. When Lucas is all didactic and preachy, that's his number one sermon. His heroes are Jedi Knight hipsters who are mellow and cool. Even though they are living in a cave and a swamp, respectively. And Darth Vader is always angry. He's always clinching his fist and talking about the power of hate and anger. And he's constantly strangling people in his own military. That's gotta be kinda bad for morale, I would think.

You know when George is filming Star Wars and nothing's going right and the damn ILM guys are fartin' around like hippies and the D.P. is mouthing off and the kid actors are driving him crazy and nobody in England respects his vision, you know every morning he reminds himself in the mirror not to give in to the dark side. "Don't strangle anybody." Darth is a big strangler. In Star Wars, Darth strangles and then lets them go. In Empire he ain't letting anybody go. It's strangle, strangle, strangle. The stormtroopers are constantly dragging dead army guys off the stage.

Anyway, I kinda think control of your emotions is bad. Bottling up your emotions is bad. If you avoid feeling hate and anger you will also suppress your passion and love. Stab a pillow, you Jedi freaks. The reason we're all yuppies in Prozac Nation today is cause George Lucas taught us all the wrong frickin' lesson when we were nine. In THX 1138, Lucas' art movie, one of the things his characters do is rebel against tranquility and the control of emotions. "Feel!" That's what THX 1138 is about. But of course The Man didn't like that movie. So then Lucas was like, okay, never mind about that feeling stuff. Control, control, control. Now he's a billionaire.

The Phantom Menace is kind of disturbing because it's Darth Vader as a little boy. You look for his inner Darth. Is he going to strangle kittens? Maybe he'll rip the head off a doll like that evil kid in Toy Story. And every once in a while, 9-year-old Darth would scowl. He was never smiling, that kid. "Ritalin, put him on Ritalin. Let's tranquilize him." It's a weird vibe. In fact, it's a retarded frickin' movie. Why are we here? You're filming the backstory, George, you moron.

I'll bet he doesn't have anybody on staff who gives him a hard time any more. You look at George Lucas now, he's a bemused Jedi Knight (with a more upscale lifestyle). He doesn't have to fight his dark side any more. Everybody agrees with him and everybody's happy and his movie frickin' sucks. Stressed out, fightin' his dark side George Lucas is a way better artist.; 7/13/15, 2:41 PM
jameswhy said...: Anybody remember Maxwell Perkins?? He edited Ernest Hemingway AND F. Scott Fitzgerald. Heavily. Helped two completely different writers find, and keep, their distinctive voices.; 7/13/15, 3:30 PM
Sydney said...: Reading through this thread,I kept thinking- "Well, the famous ones had good editors, but what if you get a bad editor?" Then Fritz provided the link to the story of the bad editor. What do you suppose is the ratio of good to bad editors?; 7/13/15, 4:27 PM
William said...: I wonder if Huck Finn ended up a mean drunk in a small town with long winters. There are narrative arcs left unexplored.; 7/13/15, 5:51 PM
Saint Croix said...: "Well, the famous ones had good editors, but what if you get a bad editor?"

Obscurity!

It's shocking when you discover amazing art that is unknown. For instance, there's a 60's British band called The Creation. Here they are in Rushmore. I had never heard of them. And I hear that music, and I wonder. Why didn't they hit it like the Who or the Kinks or the Animals? But they didn't hit it. And so they fell apart.

That's why we need to be brutal on bad art. You have to kill the bad art so magnificent art has the opportunity to thrive. And if we don't do this, if we don't engage in this art darwinism, then all we will hear is this awful prepackaged mediocrity. It will be "just good enough" but it will leave you feeling nothing.; 7/13/15, 6:33 PM
Saint Croix said...: And sometimes failure is just the way it is. What was wrong with Van Gogh's art? Nothing! But his brother couldn't sell it. They couldn't market it. Even artists who don't collaborate with anybody (painters, most obviously) still need an agent. They need the help of critics and other artists and art galleries. They need to find an audience.

Collaboration is hard! But without it, you are lost.; 7/13/15, 6:39 PM
mccullough said...: I first encountered the word coruscate when I was 20 reading Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury for a Modern American literature class.

"Dilsey sat bolt upright, her hand on Ben’s knee. Two tears slid down her fallen cheeks, in and out of the myriad coruscations of immolation and abnegation and time.”; 7/13/15, 7:07 PM
rcommal said...: Concise. Incisive.

Then there's lively and bright.

Just sayin'.

; ) + LOL

----

Hey, it's a different world, as ever that goes.; 7/13/15, 11:54 PM