When I was asked to start writing a "blog" for Huffington Post - "on anything you want," no less - two thoughts entered my mind. First I thought, "What will I write about?" Then I thought, "Who will fuck with what I write?" You see, I'm at the tail end of a two-and-a-half year process of writing and publishing my second book (It's Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive, Riverhead, May '08; C'mon, you think I'm doing this for my health?). I've also dabbled in magazine writing. Each experience has brought new fascination with the differences between what a writer wants to write, and what a writer is willing to write in order to get published. It's a well-worn topic when it comes to movies and television, familiar even to those who have no connection to the entertainment industry. Everyone knows that so-called "creative executives" muck around with what screenwriters and television show creators create (see Robbie Baitz's scintillating HuffPo posts Leaving Los Angeles, parts 1 and 2 if you want a recent heart-wrenching rendition). They give "notes." They turn what they once LOOOVED, and wanted desperately to purchase, into something else entirely, often something the creator of the project really HATES. And thus it has always been.
But I think most civilians have no idea to what extent the same forces can conspire against a single-minded vision when it comes to books and magazines. My books have my name and photograph on their covers. Those books will forever be associated almost exclusively with me. Very few people will ever know who my editors were, just as few will remember what company published them. Yet, in addition to the undeniable assistance I received in improving each rendition, there were substantial compromises made in terms of content and tone. Neither of my memoirs are precisely the books I would have chosen to write.
Would the books have been better if I'd been left alone? That's not the judgment I'm looking to make. What interests me is the fact that I would have produced tomes that more completely, and forcefully, presented my own undiluted points of view. I'm of the opinion that that's what readers are looking for when they fork over their $25. I'm of the opinion that that's what readers think they're getting.
Fifteen years ago I gave the first public performances of my first written work. It was a solo theater piece called Time on Fire that told the story of my horrifying experiences fighting not only acute leukemia, but also fighting many of the individuals and institutions supposedly devoted to its eradication. (The similarities between the ironies of sadistic physicians who inhibit recovery and tyrannical editors who clamp down on free expression have not been lost on me to this point.) Shortly after the show began its off-Broadway run I was asked to okay a major excerpt appearing in the very prestigious Harpers Magazine. The only problem with this was that the editor who approached me wanted to do the cutting of the piece herself, and then presented me with something that substantially altered the impact and meaning of my play.
Some of the changes I couldn't accept were minor in comparison to the impingements on the whole. For instance, In my play I wrote about the informed consent form I was given upon my first hospital admission. The form told me that, while 65% of the patients diagnosed as I had been would achieve remission, 80% would have a recurrence of the disease within two years. Second remissions were achieved in no more than 50% of those patients, and the length of that remission averaged in at only half the length of the first remission. Third remissions were achieved in less than 5% of those who tried. The consent form ended with a sentence that read, "Survival rates beyond five years do not exceed twenty-five percent." I was twenty-four years old when I read it.
In my play I wrote, "I looked at that sentence for a long time. I studied the way the ink stained the clean white paper to form the letters, and how the letters formed the words that were conspiring to end my life." The phrase "conspiring to end my life" had been circled in red pencil by the editor. She'd written in neat script next to it, "A bit strong, no?"
I was a twenty-four year old who'd been told he was as good as dead. "Strong" is what I was after.
The editor suggested I change the passage to read, "I studied the way the ink stained the clean white paper to form the letters, and how the letters formed the words that I saw written there."
How does one even respond to that? How does a neophyte respond, being offered publication of his first written work?
If you're me, you respond by agonizing for days, then calling the editor and suggesting, very meekly, that perhaps you'd like to have a crack at doing the cutting of the work yourself. If you're Harpers Magazine, you respond to that suggestion by saying, "take it or leave it," and withdrawing the offer of publication.
Or, actually, this exchange occurred first:
Me: "Do your readers know how much you alter what your authors have written? Maybe you should do a "Before and After" issue, where you print two versions of everything, so they could see."Editor: "Evan, it's my responsibility to act as a conduit between our writers and our readers."
Me: "Well, I'm not sure your readers know they're being fed the work of a conduit. I know I don't want to be represented by one."
Then they withdrew the offer. Maybe I wasn't so meek after all.
But probably I was foolish. At least naïve. An eight page excerpt from my play in Harpers - no matter how brutally squelched and softened - quite possibly could have transformed my existence at that point in time. Still (if you can't tell) I'm kind of proud of myself for that one.
And, if you're intrigued by my "Before and After" idea, you should run to find the recent article in the New Yorker in which Raymond Carver's original writings are published side-by-side with Gordon Lish's edited versions ("edited" being an imprecise term; Lish apparently thought nothing of re-writing Carver's endings himself.) Correspondence between the two is also published. I could hardly take in air as I read the brilliant Carver's alternately commanding and supplicant-like pleas to have his work left alone and published as he intended. It wasn't. Lish published what he liked. He published what he'd written, with Carver's name on it.
So, when HuffPo came a-knockin' at my door, the first thing I asked was, "How does it work? Do I write what I want, or are there (gasp) editors over there who'll work over what I send in?"
My answer came almost immediately. "As long as you're not threatening murder, write whatever you want and we'll post it as you like."
Now, that's my kind of offer. That's my kind of writing, and that's my kind of reading. It might not always be as polished. There might be more thistle and gristle to hack my way through until I get the author's point. But I'll know whose point it is, and that it's been made in the way that most pleases him or her. Ultimately, I'll know the author - or at least what the author wants me to know. And isn't that a slice of what reading is all about?