They unerringly go for the jugular.
The one scene in a Steinbeck novel that stands out above all else, indeed, it stands out in American literature as a whole, is the scene in the Grapes of Wrath where Rose of Sharon gives her breast to a man dying of starvation.
Steinbeck’s publisher wrote: “”Taken as the finale of such a book with all its vastness and surge, it struck us on reflection as being all too abrupt. It seems to us that the last few pages need building up.” The publisher suggested that the starving man, a stranger, needed some introduction.
Of course, Steinbeck’s very point was that he was a stranger, that Sharon of Rose brought the stranger (and all of humankind) into the Joad family.
Fortunately, Steinbeck held his ground.
The incident is revealed in biography by Jay Parini published William Heinemann this month.
Steinbeck wrote to one of his many correspondents about how publishers say a book is too short; the public want a long book. So he writes a long book and the publisher says the public’s attention cannot be held that long. The publisher wants to change and rewrite altering the rhythm.
Magazine and newspaper writers have the same trouble. Usually the article is said to be too long. In fact, the space assigned it too small. This is because an editor cannot fill white space with words, but can always chop words out to make the article fit. The writers complain the bits are chopped out by someone who wasn’t there and knows nothing about it. And that all the best bits are cut: the humour, alliteration, metaphor, sound onomatopoeia, repetition for effect, rhythm, the bizarre, hyperbole and emotion. Or the editors reject the lot on the same grounds. Nothing too bizarre is allowed to be published.
For instance, I recently found a printout of what looked like a whole series of E-mail messages to potential authors from newspaper publishers. But they were never published. Readers wouldn’t believe them, I was told. Anyway, just so you know Steinbeck wasn’t alone, I’ll try and squeak them through here. I have lost the original printout, but they ran something like this:
To CDICKENS: Your story is far too long. And it starts with a non sequitur, so we have rewritten the intro as follows: An Englishman was mistakenly executed in Paris yesterday due to a typical French bureaucratic bungle. French authorities thought the man, Mr Sydney Carton, 42, of London, was a Frenchman wanted for high treason. The brutal execution brought instant condemnation from English MP Mr E. Burke (take in later wire services).
We also think your ending is too florid. We have replaced it with: The precise whereabouts of Mr Carton’s body are not known.
To THARDY: We had a natter around the sub-editors’ table and decided it was impossible for a man to give up drink for 21 years. And we didn’t think we could allow you to editorialise at the end with that flowery rubbish about “”happiness being but a small episode in a general drama of pain”. We have tightened up the story to a brief: “”The former Mayor of the Wessex city of Casterbridge, Mr Michael Henchard, died yesterday after a long liver illness. He is survived by his daughter, Elizabeth. Funeral arrangements are yet to be made.”
To WSHAKESPEARE: Don’t you read the Editor’s memos: No Tautologies! Yet I pick up your copy and find: “”To be, or not to be.” Anyway since the Maastrict Treaty we don’t think there is much interest in vacillating Danish princes and have put the story on the spike. The assassination in Italy sounds more promising, though we don’t publish in foreign languages, so we have rewritten the last words as : And you, Brutus.
To EHEMINGWAY: Please confirm asap the death toll in the massacre in the Spanish village. Without a confirmed toll the story carries no credibility. Surely, a phone call to the cops will tell you. Also, were there any women and children?
To GORWELL: Our children’s editor liked your farmyard story, but we think children will be confused by having pigs as two-legged and the other animals as four-legged. Anyway, the illustrator found it easier to draw them all with two legs.
To CDICKENS: Urgently need full notes of all conversations with sources for your last three features. Have had defamation writs from: Commissioner of Orphans, Commissioner for Police (for an imputation of incompetency because London Streets are unsafe from pick-pockets), the Bar Association (for an imputation that lawyers cause cost and delay) and the Teachers’ Federation and Plaintiff Gradgrind (for an imputation that teachers do not teach). Don’t tell us everybody knows these things. If you stuck to the facts, Mr Dickens, our readers would learn the truth.