AtD: An editor's white whale?

[Ya Sam]

To tell the truth I don't know the details, but the question of editing 
Pynchon has always interested me as well. If I'm not mistaken, some 100 
pages were cut from the manuscript of V. However, he was an aspiring writer 
then and therefore more prone to compromise.


>From: "Nathan D. Jerpe" <njerpy at bellsouth.net>
>To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: AtD: An editor's white whale?
>Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2006 18:34:13 -0500
>
>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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