Nip/Tuck

This past weekend I've been unable to read my new New Yorker, owing to the fact that I wanted to finish Cancer Ward first. But finally, last night I had nothing holding me back, and I began reading an article by Adam Gopnik about the emotional and artistic politics of novel abridgement and additions. Little did I know that it would make me so damn mad.

One of the abridged books being discussed is Moby Dick, a favorite of mine. When I first read it (not too long ago, in fact), it caught me off-guard with its humor, as well as with the beautiful way in which it combines insanity with philosophy. As such, it was only with measured restraint that I was able to stop myself from condemning outright the idea of an abridgment. I tried to give it a chance - Gopnik seemed at first to be praising the cuts, and so I wondered, Am I wrong? Am I being unfair?

But what decided me was learning that "The Whiteness of the Whale" was one of the chapters that Orion – the publishing company whose “slim classics” series Gopnik was writing about – snipped out. Moby Dick can simply not be Moby Dick without its contemplations of evil and hopelessness intermingling with the most basic facts of reality and work. That chapter embodies much of what I love in the novel, and I was furious that Orion would cut it, and that Gopnik, whose writing and opinions I usually respect, would condone their cuts.

Luckily, the article at least was not that simple. Yes, Gopnik began by saying that Orion's abridged versions are not simple savagery. They have not made trash out of masterworks, per se. Rather, they have done what any good modern editor would do when faced with these pieces of complicated magnificence: they cut out the authorial excesses, and made them into good and digestible stories. Which is of course to say, they've excised the genius.

So, point for Gopnik.

But what I find really maddening is the idea that a “good modern editor” would find it necessary to cut out the most interesting parts out of a book. Yes, this notion is a bit debatable: certainly I have heard from some writers/publishing folk that editors today are actually doing less and less (whether or not that is actually a good thing). But something rings true about Gopnik’s glib aside: the modern publishing world does seem to gravitate towards the marketable, for the same obvious reason that publishing houses have marketing departments.

But why do people, the market, need novels to be slimmed down and shut up? Do we lack in passions? Intelligence? Grit? Certainly a world in which Cormac McCarthy could make it to Oprah’s Book Club is not a world in such dire need of simplification.

In fact I think that the problem is more complex. My experience, such as it is, has shown me that writers today are often taught that they should write for their audience instead of themselves. That's not totally crazy: most novels today are not created in an atmosphere of aristocratic plenty. If you're lucky enough to be a writer all the time, then you're a writer for a living, and as much as one might rather consider their work as pure art, it also becomes a commodity. I think this may result in authors fearing their audience just slightly, who then might alter the work to fit the vision of a made-up readership, instead of the original idea, the needful idea.

It’s only natural that this would bleed over into the editorial process. Really, an editor should be the one who is most concerned with the audience: they should be the rational creature who looks into the eyes of an alternate world and figures out what, if anything, needs to be done to make it comprehensible.

All this may be straying a bit far from my original topic. But my essential fear and frustration is that we are allowing ourselves - readers, writers, and editors all - to accept less than the naked and tumultuous truth of things. Less than the most beautiful and terrifying world that a mind can dream up.