Editors: “Like Mr. Wolf in Pulp Fiction”
Thursday, July 26th, 2007An article in Salon.com, “Let Us Now Praise Editors” by Gary Kumiya, compares editors to Mr. Wolf in Pulp Fiction (the kind of people who are called in to clean up the mess).
The first half of Kumiya’s article discusses exactly what editors do: “Editors are craftsmen, ghosts, psychiatrists, bullies, sparring partners, experts, enablers, ignoramuses, translators, writers, goalies, friends, foremen, wimps, ditch diggers, mind readers, coaches, bomb throwers, muses and spittoons — sometimes all while working on the same piece.”
The second half of the article discusses the importance of editors in light of self-publishing and blogging trends: “If learning how to be edited is a form of growing up, much of the blogosphere still seems to be in adolescence, loudly affirming its identity and raging against authority. But teenagers eventually realize that authority is not as tyrannical and unhip as they once thought. It’s edited prose, with its points sharpened by another, that will ultimately stand the test of time.”
