editors

Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Wed, 25 Aug 1999 08:22:08 +0100 

    '... What about (the collective) you: Are those
    of you who write tolerant of editorial changes
    or suggestions or reactions? ...'

    At Longmans, I had two editors, John Guest &
    Peter Green.  John was a charming, exquisitely
    educated gentleman who ran what was then
    considered the charmingly, gentlemanly 'general' list
    of an otherwise unillusioned, money-oriented, publishing
    empire.  Peter Green was his aide de camp who eventually
    became - & remained until the last year or so - the supreme
    boss of Penguin.

    I can only remember them ever making one suggestion
    for a change affecting the actual prose style.  They kept
    me straight when I misused Ming for Chang & such details,
    details that Eton boys know about instinctively in a way
    closed to a Quaker educated lad like myself.  But only
    in connection with the title of my first book did
    they urge me powerfully to drop an article.
    They wanted 'Run to the Sea' instead of 'THE Run
    to the Sea.'

    When it's your first book, believe me, you accept
    the advice of the big shots.   But I've never actually
    forgiven them.  Thirty years later, I still grieve over
    that missing 'the'.  It was MY 'the', it added that
    lovely formal, brick on brick, quality which is the hallmark
    of all serious writing - certainly of mine.  And those bastards
    made me go for that slick, ambiguous, snake-oil salesman
    alternative.

    Every writer complains about his publisher - usually that
    they didn't spend enough on marketing & advertising
    or don't bribe a sufficient number of promoters.
    I don’t hold any of that against those two chaps
    who were always marvellously kind to me.

    But I can't forget that missing THE.

    I'm too old to care now so that when it comes
    to the next two, there's going to be no damned
    compromise with anyone.  I promise you.

    Scottie B.