Eder. Óleo de Irene Gracia
Iván Thays
Raymond Carver y su editor. Fuente:Adam Zyglis/buffalonews Para Gregory Cowles, en el blog Paper Cuts, la historia tan trajinada entre el editor Gordon Lish y Raymond Carver, y las tijeras que el primero le hizo a los relatos del segundo, tiene una explicación concreta: A los escritores y a los lectores no les gusta pensar que un libro pueda ser editado. Los escritores deberían ser autores románticos y solitarios, lobos esteparios que jamás podrían poner en manos de otros seres -menos románticos, más prácticos- esas joyas inmaculadas que salen de su estómago o su cerebro. ¡Bah! El genio es y siempre lo fue Carver. Lish hizo su trabajo, nada más. Dice el excelente post:But mostly, I think, it?s because readers still cling to an idealized vision of the writer (any writer) as a romantic and solitary artist, taking dictation from the muse. Carol Polsgrove may understand writing as a social act, but outside of academia or the publishing world itself, it seems that even sophisticated readers often think that the editor?s job is simply to discover genius and to usher it unsullied into print, maybe after fixing a comma or two. To readers astounded that somebody like Gordon Lish can actually ?create? a writer?s tone or voice, I sometimes offer the analogy of musicians and producers. When Beck heads into the studio with Nigel Godrich, he emerges with the slow tempos and acoustic intimacy of ?Mutations? and ?Sea Change?; when he works with the Dust Brothers, he ends up with the R&B hip-hop party sound of ?Odelay? and ?Midnite Vultures.? Fans may prefer one style over another, but nobody blinks at the disparity or claims that only one sound represents the ?real? Beck. In fact, music fans often can?t tell you who a record?s producer is any more than avid readers can tell you who a book?s editor is. But at least they have some sense of the process, because it hasn?t been as invisible to our culture as the writer-editor relationship generally is. In that sense, maybe the Carver-Lish fascination is a good thing. It may be an extreme example, but to the extent that it familiarizes readers with the path a book can take from manuscript to publication, it confirms Thomas Edison?s line about genius: 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. And sometimes the artist isn?t the only one doing the sweating.
