In the first I learned the overall principles of editing, a mix of information on contracts, schedules, publicity, libel, and relations with book clubs, reprint houses and bookstores. Nothing was profound, but everything was instantly applicable to my job.
The second course, entitled Editing the Manuscript, was taught by a skilled woman from Simon and Schuster who distributed at the start of her seminar a thirty-two-page Xeroxed copy of a sample chapter from an imaginary novel. It contained a plethora of errors, half of which I could not see on my first reading, but under her tutelage many of the basic principles of editing emerged, with my copy of the chapter becoming covered with corrections.
The editor had several points on which she was adamant: ‘Sentences must have grammatical structure. They must preserve parallelism. Once the tense is established, it must be maintained to the bitter end. Pronouns must have antecedents that can be instantly recognized, even by the careless reader.’ She taught me that a well-constructed paragraph, with sentences in place and each word within the sentence properly used, was a creation of beauty: ‘It’s the basic unit of human thought, a format unto which can be poured your most exalted conclusions, and also your most impassioned depictions of human relationships.’
When one older student complained that we were wasting too much time on a certain passage, she snapped: ‘That’s the real name of this course. How to whip the author’s inadequate paragraph into an acceptable one. Parallelism, coherence, integrity of verbs, respect for pronouns, and the elimination of superfluous adjectives and adverbs, that’s what I’ll be talking about all winter.’
She did not bother with spelling—‘We have machines and little books which handle that’—nor was she fanatical about sticking to standard word usage, but certain New York idioms used by her young editors irritated her, and once when she heard me ask a fellow student: ‘Can you bring this to her?’ she exploded.
‘Damn it. You take a thing from here to there. You bring a thing from there to here, and if you misuse the two in your speech, you sound illiterate. But if you allow it in the manuscript you’re editing, it proves you’re not ready for the big time.’
Hungry for even bits of knowledge about my chosen profession, I absorbed all that my teachers offered, and one day after work I stopped by Miss Wilmerding’s office to report: ‘Those classes you allowed me to take, they’re sensational!’
‘That’s how we ensure that Kinetic keeps on top of the field.’
‘Thank you for telling me about them,’ and Miss Wilmerding said: ‘You earned them.’ But one weekend when I was reflecting on my progress, I awakened to a disturbing fact: ‘What I’m learning is mechanical, the rules of the game, how to handle a manuscript—if one ever comes along. What I need to know is how the manuscript got there in the first place,’ and when I queried my friends, two different students—one at Columbia and one at N.Y.U.—said the same thing: ‘This wizard Evan Cater’s giving an intensive course at the New School. Six hours on Saturday, four on Sunday for four weekends.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘There are about four real editors in New York. Hiram Hayden used to teach a fabulous course, trained half the fine writers in town. Cater’s his replacement, some think. I’m going.’
I decided to pay out of my own pocket the fee for this February course, and on four successive weekends I spent hours listening to the brilliant lectures of this quiet sixty-year-old man as he explored the psychological and mental processes involved in constructing a novel, and like the woman editor at N.Y.U. who ignored misspellings, he ignored the mechanical aspects of writing. Writing was a cerebral process that evolved not primarily from the brain but from the soul. The goal of writing was a communication between the souls of the writer and the reader, and mastery of the art consisted of the ability to utilize those symbols that would ignite flames in the reader’s soul. Any ambition less lofty was beneath his contempt.
He used for references Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, distilling from them the lessons he sought to impart on Saturday and Sunday. And Monday through Friday I remained awake late into the night consuming these masterpieces as if they were spiritual manna.
Cater did other imaginative things to blast us from our lethargy. With assistance from the famous Apollo movie house on Forty-second Street, he arranged for a showing of classic films and recommended that we find the time to see six of them: ‘And since they’re shown as double bills at the Apollo, this involves only three long evenings or afternoons.’ He was especially keen that we see the first one, The Passion of Joan of Arc, of which he said: ‘Filmed in 1928 by the Danish director Carl Dreyer, it goaded the cinema into entering the world of art. He photographed the great Falconetti as Saint Joan, in close-ups, minute by minute, allowing terror and triumph to cross her face. He allowed the porcine faces of her French and English prosecutors to explode off the screen. No excess motion, no hysterics, just those magnificent faces epitomizing ten centuries of church history and persecution.’
Cater was equally insistent about a film in the third pair, calling it ‘perhaps the finest movie ever made, Les Enfants du Paradis.’ Shot in secret during the Nazi occupation of Paris in World War II, it depicted a broad mix of people involved in a kind of vaudeville theater in Paris during an earlier revolutionary period, the children being the noisy occupants of the cheap seats in those upper galleries called paradis. There were three main characters: a ravishingly beautiful and complicated woman played by Arletty, a white-faced mime played by the emerging star Jean-Louis Barrault, and a posturing actor played by Pierre Brasseur; the interlocking relationships, including a tragic nobleman, formed the movie. In speaking of it, Cater made an important point: ‘Remember that I said I thought it perhaps the best ever made. It blew my mind. You may not agree. But your job as would-be writers is to see the movies and plays and operas that blow your minds. Try to associate with people who are more intelligent than yourself and seek out work that explodes your sensitivities.’ He also wanted us to see The Informer as an example of the psychological intensity that could be achieved through the proper use of a setting.
Now I learned what Professor Fineschreiber at C.C.N.Y. had told me about getting an education from the streets of New York, for I haunted Forty-second Street with its multitude of good cheap movie houses between Seventh and Eighth and the free Public Library at Fifth, where I could find almost any book that I might want to consult. The street was a university available to anyone who wished to utilize it, and I was voracious. I saw not only the movies Cater had arranged for his students to see but also a rich medley of the best from most of the European filmmakers, and if I now have a fairly good sense of narrative, it’s partly because I saw how dozens of the best minds in the film industry had spun their magic. But once when I stayed after class to thank Cater for having brought the street to my attention, he said: ‘Movies and books are important, yes, but if you want to probe the secrets of great writing, you must pay attention to music and painting, too.’
‘Is life long enough for all that?’ and he said: ‘Why else were you put on earth but to explore the finest fruits of human endeavor?’
What he explored and preached as the supreme goal in the writing of fiction was the creation of characters who were entirely credible and valid, and he believed that this could best be done by showing the alterations that occur in a character as he or she undergoes various experiences. ‘Fiction is growth,’ he repeated.
When the last session on the last Sunday in February ended, I remained after class to tell him: ‘I’m in training at Kinetic Press to become an editor. You’ve taught me what to look for in a manuscript.’
‘In one word, what is that?’
‘Intensity.’
‘Good. What are you editing now?’
‘I handle the slush pile. At Kinetic we call it Mount Dreck because it does build up.’
‘It builds up everyw
here, Miss Marmelstein. Your job and mine is to keep it from putting down roots right through your floor, getting a foothold.’
‘I’ll try,’ and at Kinetic the editors to whom I now forwarded the transom novels for further consideration noticed that starting in March I had cut down the rate of my recommendations to the more acceptable three per nine hundred.
One morning during the winter of 1967, when I was twenty-three and the recipient of so much praise from those supervising my work that I knew I was being considered for a promotion to a better job, I picked up a standard cardboard box with its customary well-typed manuscript. Before I had finished the third page I cried to Janice, a new employee, who was delivering interoffice mail: ‘This one justifies the care we take,’ and I handed her the pages I had just read and together we discussed the obvious merit of the writing. She had had two years of college and in that time had acquired a sense of what a book should be.
‘This one knows what he’s trying to do,’ Janice said. ‘Who is he?’ I inspected the wrapping of the box and said: ‘Lukas Yoder, Rostock, Pennsylvania.’
After Janice moved on to the next floor, I continued reading the manuscript, and that evening before going home I telephoned the mailroom: ‘Tell Janice to hurry back to Floor Five, reception desk,’ and when she appeared, fearing that she had made some mistake, I said: ‘They’ve been giving me hell for sending too many manuscripts from the slush pile. Will you read three or four chapters of this and tell me in the morning what you think?’
Delighted to be at last in touch with books, Janice accepted three chapters and the box in which they had come. In the morning Janice was waiting at my desk with an excited report: ‘Compelling. In three chapters he defines Grenzler so that I can hear the Dutchmen talking and see their barns.’
‘I said almost the same thing at one this morning.’ I thanked her and said: ‘You’ve helped me a lot. Come back in an hour. I want you to take this one by hand to some understanding editor.’ When Janice took the elevator to the upper floors, I sat at my typewriter drafting the report that would launch Kinetic’s famous ‘Grenzler Octet.’
Clarice: I’ve not bothered you for a long time, but I’ve come upon a manuscript that begs for your understanding attention. It’s about a small corner of Pennsylvania, the Dutch country, and it depicts a colorful and wonderful pattern of life. Good dialogue, some in dialect but not excessive, and characters with whom you can get involved.
It is written by a man of whom we know nothing, but we do know that he can write literate English and that he seems to have a solid understanding of how a novel is constructed. Please humor me, and give this one a careful eye.
Shirley Marmelstein, Mount Dreck
When Janice returned the manuscript three days later, the curt note said: ‘Not for me, I’m afraid.’ Irritated by this flat dismissal, I told Janice: ‘Wait right there!’ and banged out a copy of the note that had accompanied the manuscript to the first editor. I snapped: ‘Please take this to Julia right away.’
After my manuscript, for I was already calling it that, was returned a third time, I was preparing to circulate it once more when Miss Wilmerding called: ‘Miss Marmelstein? Can you join me immediately?’ and I left a fourth version of my forwarding letter unfinished. When I reached personnel, I found awaiting me not only Miss Wilmerding but also one of the senior editors, a Miss Denham, who supervised the small group of junior editors who were learning their profession.
Miss Wilmerding went directly to the point: ‘Miss Denham tells me you have very stubbornly circulated one of your slush-pile manuscripts three times, despite the fact that it’s been rejected by some of our ablest editors.’
‘I’m convinced it’s a first-class effort. It contains what fiction needs,’ and when the two women asked: ‘And what is that?’ I gave an impassioned rehash of what I had learned from Evan Cater’s February course at the New School. When I finished, somewhat flushed by my enthusiasm, Miss Denham said: ‘I agree with you. Miss Rodgers, the last editor you sent the manuscript to, told me what you were doing, so I looked at the manuscript myself, and you’re right. It does have promise. Much work to be done, but that’s what we’re here for.’ Turning back to Miss Wilmerding, she said: ‘Tell her, Pauline,’ and the personnel manager said: ‘We’ve been delighted with your growth, Miss Marmelstein, and the reports we’ve had from your classes. Mr. MacBain’s given authority to move you into a junior editorship, so as soon as we can find someone to take over your duties with unsolicited manuscripts …’
I wanted to leap out of my chair and shout ‘Whee!’ but looking at the two rather staid women so much older than I, I realized that my joy might be wrongly interpreted, so I said as modestly as the situation permitted: ‘It’s wonderful news—what I’ve been working toward.’ Then I remembered Janice and said: ‘May I make a suggestion? The new mail girl on our floor, Janice. She’s responsible and has shown a serious interest in what I’ve been doing.’
‘How is that?’ Miss Wilmerding asked, and I said: ‘In her spare time she hangs around my desk, eager to know what I’m doing—to look at manuscripts.’
After consulting a file, Miss Wilmerding said: ‘I think that might be arranged, but you must say nothing to her. As for your move, Miss Denham has some ideas,’ and the senior editor delivered news that burst in the room like fireworks on the Fourth: ‘Since you’re so enamored of the Pennsylvania Dutch work, you’ll move to my floor and start by seeing if you can get the author to whip his work into shape. If you can, you’ll present it to the editorial board to gain their approval, and then to the salesmen to see if they can show any interest. When that’s done, whether you succeed or not, you’ll be fledged as an editor.’
For some moments I sat silent, knowing that I ought to say something but not at all confident that I would strike the proper note. What I wanted to do was the same as before, to leap and shout ‘Whee!’ but once again I feared this might not be proper, so with a broad grin, which I could not control, I told the two older women: ‘This is a day I’ve dreamed about. I think I’m ready. I’ll not let you down.’
‘One word of caution,’ Miss Denham said. ‘Never fall in love with a manuscript or with its author. Hold both at arm’s length. They don’t love you, and in the long run your success depends on your ability to judge each of them critically—at a distance—at arm’s length.’
When I returned to my desk I quietly took from my typewriter the fourth incarnation of my report on the Yoder, carefully reboxed the manuscript and began cleaning out my desk. That done, I telephoned the mailroom and asked Janice to join me; when she appeared, I said: ‘Let’s have a drink,’ and I said this in such a conspiratorial way, not meaning to do so, that she asked: ‘Not bad news, I hope?’ and I smiled: ‘I think not.’
At the bar I said: ‘I’ll break your neck, Janice, if you say a word—not to anybody. But I have reason to believe that very soon they’re going to take you off the mail bit and have you take over my desk. Your first leg up.’
‘That would be wonderful!’ So again, after swearing her to secrecy, I addressed her as if I were an old, experienced hand indoctrinating a neophyte: ‘It’s an exciting job. You’re the first person in the house to see the manuscripts,’ and with that I proceeded to analyze the numbers: ‘Of nine hundred manuscripts that come in over the transom, the big houses find only two or three worth bothering with.’ I also told her it was important to recognize the one fine work that does sneak in. And I coached her on which of the Kinetic editors were most sympathetic to beginning writers.
At the conclusion of my lecture, with Janice’s eyes aglow with hope, she asked: ‘But what’s happening to you?’ and I, who had been afraid that she might never ask, said modestly: ‘They’re making me an editor. Beginning level, of course, but I won’t stay there long. And I’ll bet you won’t be on Mount Dreck permanently.’
‘I’ll drink to that, Shirl.’
‘Please, I despise that nickname. Sounds so stupid … especially if I??
?m to be an editor.’
‘Apologies,’ and we drank toasts, each to the other’s boundless future.
The junior editors who had rejected Grenzler when I sent it to them from Mount Dreck continued to express doubts when I joined them with the manuscript, and their negative views permeated the office, so that I encountered constant difficulties when trying to gain approval for my maiden effort. But I never lost heart regarding what had become my crusade, nor in the inevitability of its final success.
However, when I applied in due course for a money advance for my writer, I ran into frontal opposition: ‘Your suggestion of fifteen hundred dollars is preposterous, wholly outside our parameters. Advances like that are reserved for authors with proven records.’
‘What can I tell him? I understand he could use the money.’
‘So could we all. You’re authorized to go up to five hundred dollars, but only when you feel certain we’ll get a finished manuscript.’
‘But we already have the manuscript.’
‘I said “finished.” ’
I understood my position, and when the others were gone I defined it: I’m convinced it’s already a fine manuscript. But before I can persuade others, it’s got to be as professionally crafted as possible. Until it is, I can’t assure him he’s got a contract, nor can I even tell him we’ll give him an advance. What I can do is telephone him and give him a word of personal encouragement.
When I heard my unseen, unknown man speak in a low, unemotional voice and agree quickly with every suggestion I made, I thought: We’re going to be a team, and this encouraged me to tell him: ‘Mr. Yoder, if we work out a program to accomplish what you’ve just promised, in return I’ll promise you two things. You’ll have a firm contract with Kinetic. And when I’m convinced you can do what you say, Kinetic will give you a cash advance and we’re off and running.’