As a footnote to the recent tales of Raymond Carver and his aggressively interventionist editor Gordon Lish, Marcel Berlin notes in his column today that the celebrated ending of ‘One More Thing’ turns out to have been written not by Carver but Lish. A man has been ordered to leave by his wife:
He said, ‘I just want to say one more thing.’
But then he could not think what it could possibly be.
{Quotation ends}
On a slightly related note, in a transcript of a Geoffrey Hill reading I was sent recently (Geoff samizdat!), GH talks about a word Gillian Rose changed in the margin of one of his books (in her copy of the book, I mean). He now prefers her word to his and plans to incorporate the change in the ‘deathbed edition’ of his poems he is preparing.
Is there was one line, any line, you could aggressively edit and alter in any work of literature what would it be?
He said, ‘I just want to say one more thing.’
But then he could not think what it could possibly be.
{Quotation ends}
On a slightly related note, in a transcript of a Geoffrey Hill reading I was sent recently (Geoff samizdat!), GH talks about a word Gillian Rose changed in the margin of one of his books (in her copy of the book, I mean). He now prefers her word to his and plans to incorporate the change in the ‘deathbed edition’ of his poems he is preparing.
Is there was one line, any line, you could aggressively edit and alter in any work of literature what would it be?
1 comment:
I would replace the line "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" with the line "There is no God."
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