AtD: An editor's white whale?

[Nathan D. Jerpe]

I'm ignorant with respect to how publishing works, but does anybody know whose task it was to edit Against the Day? Or, is this the sort of project assigned to a team of editors? I've read that the final work comes in at 410,000 words; I'd be profoundly interested to hear how many words the first drafts contained, or how long the editing process took, or how many hairs the chief editor pulled out, when a manuscript two feet tall came and gobbled up her desk.

It's just that AtD is on par with some of the lengthiest, most ambitious English novels ever written. If one were to account for the density and difficulty of Pynchon's work, it may well be the most daunting editorial undertaking of all time.

Cheers,
Nathan

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