When editors were gods

One well-known writer/editor's advice for managing editors' expectations

"As a general rule, don't talk a good game before you actually write, because then editors will expect more and be let down. Always tell editors how you're struggling, but you're sure you'll 'bring it together' and pull the fat out of the fire at the eleventh hour." — Frank Deford in his 2012 book, "Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter." In addition to being a sportswriter, and a very good one, Deford edited The National, a short-lived but well regarded daily sports newspaper in the early 1990s.

While I didn't know the late Deford, I did see him in Grand Central from time to time and was always struck by his remarkable resemblance to the 1950s TV Western hero Yancy Derringer.

Domineering, almost ruthless—and of course a great magazine editor

"Mr. Lorimer had a domineering, almost ruthless personality. Like all the great tycoons—Ford, Rockefeller. He created an institution in his own image, out of himself, and of course he was one of the great magazine editors of all time. He was, in a sense, the Post, all of it. It was his magazine from the front cover to the back. And he had to assert himself constantly in everything—rejecting three out of five of my sketches, for instance—because if he had relinquished one prerogative the whole complicated structure which he had built would have collapsed. (Not really, of course, but he must have felt that way subconsciously.)" — Norman Rockwell, reflecting on the legendary Saturday Evening Post editor George Horace Lorimer in his 1960 memoir, My Adventures as an Illustrator.

A crime writer cries foul on editors' capricious title changes

"I don’t know why editors—especially magazine editors—insist on changing good titles to invariably lousy ones." — Crime writer Ed McBain, introducing one of his early short stories in his 2006 collection, "Learning to Kill."

In assembling the book, McBain took the opportunity to restore the story's original title.

McBain's title: "Downpour."

Title the editors of Argosy changed it to: "Murder in the Keys."

Which is better? You decide.

Incidentally, McBain was no stranger to changing names, having changed his own from Salvatore Albert Lombino to Evan Hunter. He also had an assortment of pseudonyms, McBain being the most famous.

The children's magazine editor and the famous dike

The legend of the little Dutch boy who saves his town by plugging a leaking dike with his finger was apparently concocted by Mary Mapes Dodge for her 1865 children's book Hans Brinker; or, the Silver Skates. Dodge was also the founder and editor of the most famous children's magazine of her day (and long after), St. Nicholas.

Interestingly, according to this expert, the legend is virtually unknown among actual Dutch people.

 

 

 

A bound volume of St. Nicholas magazine
from 1916. (Author's Collection)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Gottlieb on the 'noble' profession of editing

"I don’t like writing. I hate writing, I never wanted to be a writer. I think it's an ignoble profession. As opposed to editing, which is a noble profession because it's a service profession. Whom are you serving when you write? Yourself, your ego. No, no, no. Editing is a noble profession." — Robert Gottlieb, in his acceptance speech on receiving the inaugural Editorial Excellence Award from the Biographers International Organization in 2014.

(I was there and believe he was at least sort of kidding.)

Gottlieb, who died this past June, was best-known as a book editor, especially for the acclaimed biographies of Robert A. Caro, but also did a stint as editor of The New Yorker, from 1987 to 1992.

Mark Twain draws a distinction betwen editors and God Almighty

"Any editor to whom I submit my manuscripts has an undisputed right to delete anything to which he objects, but God Almighty Himself has no right to put words in my mouth that I never used!" — an irate Mark Twain complaining to the editors of St. Nicholas magazine about their handling of material from his book "Tom Sawyer Abroad."

The quote comes from illustrator Dan Beard's 1939 autobiography, "Hardly a Man Is Now Alive." Beard writes that he wasn't present for Twain's outburst but heard about it from several staffers.

 

Even more intimidating than presidents or movie stars

"A writer may never find himself intimidated by governors or even presidents, by tycoons or even movie stars, for he knows he has the power to write about them. But editors have the power to pass on his writing." — Meyer Levin in his 1973 nonfiction book, "The Obsession."

Levin is probably best remembered today as the author of "Compulsion," a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder case.

R.I.P. Robert Gottlieb, 1931-2023

"You are the living god. You are not there to please the writers, but the writers are there to satisfy you because they want to be in the magazine." — Robert Gottlieb, onetime New Yorker editor, quoted in his obituary in today's New York Times. Gottlieb was contrasting magazine editing with book editing, where, he said, the editor's job was "to serve the book and the writer."

Gottlieb's memoir, "Avid Reader," was published in 2016.

The typical editor's office, 1927

“Today your editor is rather inclined to look like an East Indian potentate surrounded by all the pomp and ceremony that hedge a king. He sits inviolate and immured within paneling of Mexican mahogany, under mellowing oil paintings and surrounded by onyx pillars and Persian rugs and rosewood desk tops, with an undersecretary who receives you in the waiting room upholstered with brown Morocco, and ushers you into the anteroom with probably a Louis Quinze motif predominating, where you are received by the great one’s personal lady confidante and eventually passed into the royal presence itself.” — an anonymous “author’s wife,” who seems to have accompanied her hubby on visits to editors, writing in The Saturday Evening Post in 1927.

By all accounts the author was Margaret Stringer, whose husband, Arthur Stringer, was a well-known novelist, poet, and magazine writer. That same year she published a widely praised book on the topic, “Confessions of an Author's Wife,” also anonymously.

The secret of success in magazine work (also circuses)

"A shrewd understanding of human nature, a real sympathy with it, is the secret of success in magazine work, as in running a department store, a church, or a circus." — James Eaton Tower, editor of Good Housekeeping magazine, writing on "Educated Women in Magazine Work," a chapter in the book "Vocations for the Trained Woman: Opportunities Other Than Teaching" (1910).

Tower was the ring master of Good Housekeeping from 1899 to 1913.

One writer on his fear of editors

"I know in my heart that editors are poor fish (because they often turn down manuscripts of mine that I know are superior to anything they ever saw before), but I fear them just as if they had real intelligence." — Ellis Parker Butler, in his 1923 book, "Ghosts What Ain't."

Butler (1869-1937) was a prolific and popular humorist in his day.

 

Henry Miller shares his uncensored opinion of editors

"Editors are anathema to me. I have never allowed any editor to do any editing of my work.... Magazine editors are the worst offenders. They say, 'Don't you think this paragraph would be better here instead of there?' And I say, 'No, I don't. Take it or leave it.'" — Henry Miller, author of the much-banned "Tropic of Cancer" and other books, in his 1971 autobiography, "My Life and Times."