Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (44 page)

Michael Denneny

M
ICHAEL
D
ENNENY
is a senior editor at St. Martin’s Press and the general editor of the Stonewall Inn Editions, a line of trade paperbacks devoted to gay and lesbian literature. He is the author of
Lovers: The Story of Two Men
and
Decent Passions: Real Stories about Love.
He has edited
First Love/Last Love: Fiction from Christopher Street
and
The Christopher Street Reader,
and is currently preparing a collection of his essays for publication. He was one of the founders of
Christopher Street
magazine and worked at the University of Chicago Press and Macmillan before joining St. Martin’s Press
.

In this eloquently outspoken essay on political correctness and its relevance to fiction, Michael Denneny considers whether P.C. exerts a benign or malign effect on the writer and editor’s freedom of expression
.

Observing what he calls “The Supreme Rule of Editing: Always remember that this is not your book but the author’s,” Mr. Denneny recognizes the sensitivity of minorities—particularly African Americans, gays, and lesbians—to their portrayal in fiction. But he cautions editors to bow to no pressure in the effort to bring out the best of what the author has to say—however unpopular it may be with the currently influential literary, academic, and mass-media establishments. “The truth of the matter is that serious works of art can be neither propaganda nor public relations efforts, no matter how urgently needed or how well intentioned
.”

Following a stimulating discussion of the ethical and aesthetic quandaries faced by an editor dealing with a question of P. C, Mr. Denneny concludes
that “in general, the attempt to make any fiction politically correct is a misguided one; it is an attempt to police the imagination. This inclination has been quite prominent among the politically committed since Plato first banished poets from his ideal republic; its resurgence today is merely an unfortunate but quite predictable by-product of a valuable surge in political activism, the dangers of which have always been self-righteousness and intolerance.…

“
Asan editor, my loyalties lie with the freedom of the individual imagination, the fruits of which have done very little harm in the real world. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of political action. Until the politically correct can actually produce a better world in fact rather than in theory, I for one am not willing to grant them control—or even veto power—over the realm of imaginative literature
.”

The Question of “Political Correctness
”

The recent squalls over politically correct speech that have swept through various college campuses and on into some of our national news magazines give some indication of the turbulence generated when a culture undergoes profound realignment. In the case of the P.C. debate, we see some of the strains attendant on the quite remarkable social changes occurring in American culture in the last few decades. For most of our history, American culture was dominated, defined, and evaluated by a relatively small segment of the population: English-speaking male persons with a deep grounding in and loyalty to the Anglo-Saxon literary and cultural tradition. Although there has always been some tension between the dominance of this so-called genteel tradition and various nativist, regional, or immigrant self-assertions, the main line of American culture has been emphatically Anglo, as has been the case with other countries that began their history as British colonies.

However, since World War II this country has witnessed seismic shifts in both the culture—consider the emergence of urban male Jewish writers in the fifties, African-American women writers in the seventies, and gay and lesbian writers today—and in the demographic and social substratum upon which that culture rests. For instance, on the Berkeley campus in 1960, only 3 percent of the students were nonwhite, whereas in the autumn of ’91, over 50 percent of the incoming class came from non-Anglo traditions. This opening up of the educational and cultural establishment to hitherto disenfranchised groups, the emergence of what is known as pluralism, appears
today to be an irreversible trend. If it is indeed irreversible, this would mark a profound—and in my opinion a highly desirable—shift not only in the composition but perhaps even in the basic nature of that culture.

Times of such basic transitions naturally generate confusion, conflict, and trouble for those of us who work in cultural fields such as publishing. The recent insistence on politically correct speech, or more precisely the attacks on writers found guilty of being politically incorrect, i.e., offending members of one or another minority group, is a case in point. Its effects are felt on both ends of the publishing process, as a pressure on the individual author and as an influence on the opinion of the reviewer as well as the response of the reader, and they raise nice questions of judgment for the working editor.

…

When an author from a hitherto marginalized group succeeds in raising her voice in the public space, she feels not only the weight an author feels—the dreadfully public nature of publication—but also the burden of being a spokesperson for her community. While attempting to speak in her own unique and authentic voice, she is constrained by the realization that she will be heard and read as a representative of her group. This is a dilemma that is inherent in the historical situation and cannot be avoided; each author must negotiate her way through these dangerous waters, finding a balance between the claims of her own voice and her responsibility to the community. There are in my opinion no flat rules here, and the responsibility of the editor is to be sensitive to the issue while acting as a sounding board for the writer. The decisions taken are so basic that they must be thrashed out by the author rather than imposed by the editor, who in this instance, as in so many others, plays a part oddly reminiscent of the non-judgmental but supportive therapist. At times this can be a rather tedious role—editor as echo chamber—but it does have the great advantage of adhering to The Supreme Rule of Editing: Always remember that this is not your book but the author’s.

The truth of the matter is that serious works of art can be neither propaganda nor public relations efforts, no matter how urgently needed or how well intentioned. It is curious that this is not abundantly clear to everyone today, given the dismal results of the fifty-year literary experiment with socialist realism in the USSR. I mean “Man meets tractor, man falls in love with tractor, man marries tractor” just doesn’t cut the mustard. If we want art—and whether or not we want art has indeed been a serious question to political thinkers since Plato—we must give up this absurd notion that art can provide role models for anyone. It is beyond me how this idea ever achieved currency, since a moment’s reflection blows it away.
Homer’s Achilles, whatever else he was, was certainly no role model for the ancient Greeks, as he rejected all counsel of moderation and stormed against the limits of mortality, which for the Greeks defined the human condition. Nor was Madame Bovary intended to be a guide for the lives of provincial French women. This role model theory of literature boils down to a simplistic notion of monkey see, monkey do, which reveals a profound misunderstanding of the relation between literature and life.

Nevertheless, there is an understandable tendency on the part of social groups who have not previously achieved visibility in the culture or who have suffered under negative public images generated by others to feel intensely possessive about how they are portrayed, especially by their own. Ever since the furor over Philip Roth’s
Portnoy’s Complaint
, various communities have shown a tendency to judge works of fiction by the impact they assume such works will have on the community’s public reputation. This is both a remarkably shortsighted and a remarkably persistent tendency, as can be seen in the initial reaction to Ntozake Shange’s
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf
or Larry Kramer’s
Faggots
, both of which were attacked most bitterly by members of each author’s own community. As far as I can see, the author has no choice but to endure such emotional buffeting and critical riptides, while preserving the authentic honesty of her own vision; the editor’s job is to support the author against all comers. This can sometimes be a bruising experience for an editor—though nowhere near as bruising as it is for the author—but it comes with the territory, as my mother would say. To my mind, the most apt response to such a situation was that of Spike Lee after the storm of advice and criticism unleashed by the announcement that he intended to make a movie about the life of Malcolm X: “If you don’t like the movie I make about Malcolm, go make your own.”

In such situations both the author and the editor will constantly feel the pressure to conform and be politically correct. But this is merely another expression of the essential dialectic of the creative imagination, the tension between the author and society, between individual talent and the tradition. Society, tradition, and the currently politically correct always have the advantage, both of weight of opinion and of numbers. It seems reasonable to me that the editor do what he or she can to redress the balance by standing behind the author’s individual talent and unique vision.

…

In addition to protecting the author from the demands for political correctness emanting from her own community—“Is it good for the Jews?”—there are other, more subtle issues that arise when publishing writers from a community different from one’s own. As Joan Pinkvoss of Aunt Lute
Books has pointed out, the great danger when, for instance, a white editor is working with a writer of color is the sometimes almost unconscious temptation to make the writer’s voice more intelligible or acceptable (the one sliding into the other) to white readers. This temptation must be resisted absolutely. It is the integrity of the writer’s voice and vision
alone
that can provide the editor with a true standard for the editing process. The goal of editing is to make the book better, not different. From the history of black music in this country, we know fairly well the mechanics of producing a white “cover” for a black song. This is essentially a commercial and cultural rip-off, which to my mind would be a serious crime if committed by an editor. Even if the writer is willing—or eager—to make such changes in an effort to be more commercially successful (which we used to call selling out), it seems to me that such pandering to the marketplace negates the reason you would sign up such a book in the first place—your delight in the power and freshness of a voice and message that expand your own horizon.

The temptation to make a black author more acceptable to white readers, far from making the work more “universally” available is a subtle but serious betrayal of the author, for it masks the attempt, however innocent, to change the audience the writer intended to the readers the editor has in mind. This truly negates the purpose of engaging in pluralistic publishing in the first place and is reminiscent of the early explorers and anthropologists who brought back samples of the “exotic” humanity they encountered around the globe for the amusement or edification of Europeans. This is abhorrent since it would ultimately turn literature into a zoo. The purpose of pluralistic publishing is to open the realm of the written word to hitherto excluded groups while at the same time letting people from other communities hear these new voices. Of course, the first time you listen to someone who speaks in a dialect or accent new to you, it takes some time to get the hang of it. But the editor’s job is never to make everyone speak in the same way, but to rejoice in the richness that a variety of different voices offers us.

…

Although most of the conflicts over political correctness emerge from differences between the writer’s vision and the convictions of the more vocal members of her own community regarding how members of that community should be portrayed publicly, there is also the question of writers characterizing members of “other” groups in what could be considered a negative way. In fact, one gets the impression from public discussions of the topic that this is the major problem, for instance the presentation of African American men in the media mainly as criminals or drug addicts, thus slandering a whole group. Whether or not this is still true of the media in general is another question; however, in my experience it comes up remarkably
rarely in publishing. Negative stereotypes of African Americans are now unusual and generally arise from clichéd thinking and lack of imagination (the signs of a poor writer of fiction) rather than from racism. And, except for an occasional British book, one simply doesn’t come across casual anti-Semitism in novels today.

One does still see unthinking homophobic comments now and then, in which case the editor’s job is to point these out to the author. If there is no justification for such comments in either the plot or the portrayal of the character, the author should be made aware of the possible impact on the reader. (Obviously portraying a homophobic character or a homophobic act does not make the author homophobic.) Recently I was working on a mystery in which one character asserted, “I’m not queer,” and I flagged it for the author. In context the use of the word “queer” instead of “gay” would to my ear indicate one of the following:
(a)
this is a bad guy because bad guys use bad language (which he was, but at this point in the plot the reader should not have been tipped off to that),
(b)
this character is homophobic and that will somehow be relevant to the plot, or
(c)
this character protests too much, which means he’s uncertain or conflicted about his sexuality and this fact will somehow be relevant to the plot. Since the second and third explanations did not seem to me to fit the plot, I thought the author had made the mistake of tipping the reader off to this man’s character too early in the mystery. However, after some discussion the author realized that he did mean to indicate some severe sexual repression in this man; it was a theme that he had intended to bring out more but that had gotten lost in the writing, and a few further changes in the manuscript made it fit smoothly (without giving the plot away).