Remember Vintage Contemporaries?
Less expensive than hardback editions but with an eye-catching design palette that captured the 1980s zeitgeist, Vintage Contemporaries allowed Mr. Fisketjon to take risks on new authors and resurrect the careers of respected but underselling midcareer writers, like Raymond Carver and Thomas McGuane....
Mr. Fisketjon developed a reputation for methodical editing and close personal relationships with his writers. Armed with a green pen, he would go slowly, reading just five pages an hour, covering each with a spider web of notes, suggestions and cuts....
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23 comments:
Talk about a highly difficult, sensitive profession. How do you edit a writer's creative effort without changing the writer's irreplaceable style and imbuing it with your own subtle style aspects? How do you do that, and improve upon, refine, the writer's creative intention? How do you do it, long term, with different artists?
"Ellis, Tartt, McInerney and McCarthy." The law firm?
I wonder who regarded him with such regard, and if that included the authors he edited.
"Knopf fired Mr. Fisketjon in 2019, citing a “breach of company policy.” The publisher did not reveal details, but the journalist Ash Carter reported in Air Mail in 2025 that Mr. Fisketjon had come to the office drunk, then placed his hands on the shoulders of a female employee in a way that made her uncomfortable."
We're also given several pictures of him, one with a cigar and the other with a cig. So, I guess we know why he died at 72.
When an ordinary reader reads a book, he notices many things, but when thousands of people read a book, collectively they notice everything. The editor has to keep the thousands in mind.
Supposedly Theodore Dreiser would send his editor a steamer trunk full of manuscript and his editor would find the book. There were probably many different coherent novels in one of those trunks.
I am currently reading The Bourne Identity, and he sure could have used a good editor, which is why the movie seems better than the original book. The movie was a tightly edited version of the story, which was a great concept.
"one of the best of his generation"
They might be considered different generations, but I would think Robert Gottlieb would rank as *the* best.
You know, I've been puzzling a lot lately over who was the best freakin' book editor of a generation.
I went through a Modern Literature phase in the late 1980s and read Carver and McInerney. Might have been these "Vintage Contemporaries" editions -- I remember they were in paperback form -- but I thought they had a different name. I thought it was "trade paperbacks" but that seems to have been for comics.
I enjoyed Bright Lights, Big City; it felt like it captured the zeitgeist of the 1980s. Reading it in the 2nd person was weird. "No! I wouldn't do that!" But I guess that was the point.
Editors: unsung literary heroes or just really annoying?
(Spoken as someone who could definitely use a good editor, but whose writerly ego is too fragile to invite one.)
Brett Easton Ellis was one of the three main targets of the 90s satirical magazine "Spy." The others were NYT editor Abe Rosenthal, and ... you can guess the other.
Contrary to what F. Scott Fitzgerald said, there may be second acts in American lives, but there were no second acts for some American novelists: Ellis, McInerney, and Fitzgerald himself. The problem with being the "voice of a generation" is figuring out what to do when your generation's moment has passed.
Neal Stephenson is a great storyteller but his books tend be long meandering slogs in the hundreds of pages. Stephenson desperately needs an editor like the departed mentioned above but peeps buy his books anyhow despite the verbosity so there's no incentive for Stephenson or his publisher to use an editor. Standard fiction is just woke crap for the most part and editorial guidance won't help thst much IMHO. Poetry is worse.
Re: editing. John McPhee is one of my favorite authors. In his little book, "Draft No. 4," he explains the how and the why of his writing style. It's a treat to read, if you're a bit of a nerd about these kinds of things. :- )
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374537976/ref=mes-dp
Aggie (first comment):
Someone on Twitter reported that Fisketjon not only didn't insist on authors accepting his edits, he never even looked to see whether they accepted them. An editor who provides huge masses of intelligent take-it-or-leave-it suggestions doesn't seem at all objectionable to me.
"Gary Fisketjon had been McCarthy’s editor at Knopf since All the Pretty Horses. However, when work on The Road began, McCarthy requested a new editor. "
So it looks like he got out right before the peak insanity of editing happened.
Like music producers, I often wonder how much the editors shape the work. This guy sounds awesome. The Quincy Jones of book editors.
"too big to edit" has always been a problem. But you also have the problem of editors are big publishers "Gutting" and "re-writing" some new authors work. And its only when they become successful, that these authors find their true voice.
Its too bad someone didn't edit Mailer's "Naked and the Dead". You could've easily cut 100 pages of bilge outta that one. Or maybe they did, and the original was so much worse. LOL.
You see the same thing in old movies. Peckinpah would complain his "masterpieces" had been butchered. If only the movie he made (or wanted to be made) could've be shown. And then when he becomes successful and has freedom to pick and choose his projects, what does he do "bring me the head of alfredo Garcia". And "Convoy". So some directors needs an external force keeping them on track. And I'm sure its true with some novelists.
Gottlieb cut 350,000 words, about a third, out of Caro's "The Power Broker." Caro envisioned it as a two-volume work.
I loved the book, but I agree with Gottlieb's assessment:
"I might get people interested in Robert Moses once. I could never get them interested in him twice."
McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" reminded me of James Ellroy. It seemed like Ellroy ended every section with somebody getting kneed in the groin or punched in the face. It was like punctuation for him.
Max Perkins was the "super-editor" of the 30s and 40s. With someone like Thomas Wolfe, he'd take Wolfe's massive tomes and then cut them down to digestable portions that people would read.
With Hemingway it was more in the line of suggestions and support. I think "accross the river and into the trees" might have been better if Perkins had been healthy and there for Hemingway. Or maybe he could've convinced Scribners and "Papa" to forgo the novel, cut out 50 percent, and make it a novella. Maybe pair it with the story from Islands in the Stream about Thomas Hudsons' son.
Whatever happened to the last part of LBJ? I wonder if Caro wants to leave the book for after his death. Or maybe he's just waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish Game of thrones. "You first, George."
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