Writing for Readers

[Micah_Bedwell_at_PHPOST at mail.nextel.com]

     Thomas Wolfe was edited?
     
     M.


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Writing for Readers
Author:  sitka at teleport.com (Steelhead) at INTERNET
Date:    01/10/97 09:37


Christopher Gonzales inquires:
     
>> A while back, someone posted a message about an author (XXX?) and said 
>> something like "this author writes 1,000 pages of literary pyrotechnics,
>> and says he always keeps the reader in mind, meanwhile Vonnegut, who writes 
>> thin novels, says he only writes for himself."
     
Well, actually Christopher, that assertion applied to the following writers:
     
a. Shirley MacLean, who said "thousands of pages for thousands of readers 
and their thousands of lives."
     
b. James Redfield, who observed "sometimes it required dozens of sentences 
to translate a simple ideogram from the wisdom of the ancient Peruvian time 
travellers. It was a difficult task, but it was my destiny to do it."
     
c. David Foster Wallace, upon publication of IJ, "and they edited *me* more 
harshly than Max Perkins did Thomas Wolfe (the real Tom Wolfe, not the 
Other.). Some day my readers will revolt against the tyranny of editorial 
censorship."
     
d. Danielle Steele, "My Zen master advised me--after my recent trauma on 
Hard Copy--that it often takes many pages to accurately convey a message 
craved by millions: absolutely nothing."
     
e. Marge Piercy, "the roadmap to Utopia won't be found in a Baedecker guide."