Editing Pynchon?

[ppetto at ppetto.com]

Here's an article in praise of editing that I think our beloved author might enjoy It's a short piece on algebra and its difficulty, with quaternion edits.

   http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_08_09.html

I believe that Pynchon values a good editor, and has used one (or more) on all his books. John Krafft & Luc Herman have written two great pieces exploring this in the case of V.

Fast Learner: The Typescript of Pynchon’s V. at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 49, No. 1, Spring 2007, compares V.'s corrected typescript with the published novel. I recommend everyone read this.

>From the Ground Up: The Evolution of the South-West Africa Chapter in Pynchon’s V. in Contemporary Literature XLVII, 2 , takes one section and goes into greater detail. Also a wonderful piece.

I recall hearing a lot about both Faith Sale editing Gravity's Rainbow, and about editing of more recent works. Although editing often focuses on reducing length -- that's not its only purpose. {Insert your own emasculation joke here.}

Figuring this stuff out, at this point, is a bit like decoding the positional information from the Kremlin's dais -- and just as fun.

   Peter++


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Peter Petto <ppetto at ppetto.com>
Bay Village, OH