Editing Pynchon?

[Carvill John]

John Krafft and Luc Herman's 'Fast Learner' is a great article, and illuminates a lot of the areas touched on in this thread.


But as Heikki makes clear, below, the 'editing' really consisted of suggestions to Pynchon as to which sections of the book (i.e. 'V.') needed revision, or excising, or even shuffling. There was a suggestion at one stage that McClintic Sphere should be removed entirely but Pynchon insisted on keeping him in.


The point being, nobody took Pynchon's manuscript and, humming gently to themselves, went about snipping it here and there, trimming and changing it, rearranging sections, paraphrasing him, etc. That level of editing did not occur. Suggestions were made to him, he asked for advice here and there, but the final decision was, as far as I can make out, always his. And this was his first novel; the chances of someone 'heavily' editing a subsequent one would surely have been reduced further? 


We don't know whether Pynchon has an editor these days, we don't know anything about those details. BUt any suggestions that he needs an editor in the sense of someone who can cut whole sections out of ATD, is just bizarre. People keep saying '*if* a structure exists', but the simple fact that we don't know what (or how many) hidden structures are lurking in there, means taking the discussion any further towards specifics such as which sections to cut, can only be hypothetical at best.


The next stage is to say, ok, we don't mean that sort of editing, we're not suggesting that, what we mean is that Pynchon needs an editor who can *advise* him on what sections (or narrative threads) he might cut, those which seem most obviously superfluous, or which most noticeably bog the narrative down. BUt even then, how many times could an editor make such a suggestion, and be met with 'but I have structural or thematic - or even aesthetic - reasons not to cut that bit...', before they gave up making such suggestions?


We risk accusations of straying into 'fanboy' territory if we regard Pynchon as so infallible as to be above editorial advice, but I'd very much prefer to err, heavily, on that side, than to suggest that a book like ATD 'needed editing'. It's fine as it is. It has it's baggiest of baggy parts, it's tight, crystalline perfection parts, it's a vast intellectual and artistic banquet from which we are invited to select our most enjoyable flavours.


Finally, think of this: who here would opt to read a Pynchon novel in abridged form, if such an edition was produced? 

Right, I need a coffee now

J


----------------------------------------
>
> Whereas both articles by Luc Herman and John Krafft tell a wonderful
> story of revising and editing - chiefly by Pynchon himself, with Cork
> Smith as a very competent sparring partner.
>
> As Luc and John write: "[I]t is already abundantly clear that Pynchon
> mastered the art of novel writing at tremendous speed - between the
> summer of 1961 and the spring of 1962, with only a few suggestions from
> his editor to give him direction. Contrary to what he says (perhaps with
> a little false modesty) in the introduction to _Slow Learner_ about his
> sluggish development as a short-story writer, Pynchon was certainly a
> fast learner when it came to the novel."
> "Fast Learner: The Typescript of Pynchon's _V._ at the Harry Ransom
> Center in Austin" Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 49,
> No. 1, Spring 2007. P. 18
>
>
> Heikki
>

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