(4 of 7)
The pressure on the publishing assembly line is increasing. Trendy books on jogging, herbal medicine and biofeedback must be out by the cash register before the next craze sends them to the remaindered pile. Novels with big advances behind them have to be whizzed through so the publisher can get back his investment. The results are faster production deadlines and more work for fewer people. Says Putnam Editor Faith Sale: "Books on tight schedules are proofread in hunks by different people, and in some cases copy editing is done the same way." This may not affect grammar and spelling, but it can create inconsistencies: a character who enters a room wearing a blue dress and leaves wearing a red one.
In such a frenzied atmosphere, the word book may give way in favor of project, package, hot property and blockbuster. Even editors of noncommercial novels and belles-lettres feel the pressures to score with a Merv missile, a work that will get its author on a TV talk show, the most powerful selling medium of all. Smaller implements, like sharp blue pencils, are often disregarded.
Devotees of Strunk's Elements of Style may still keep the faith that good prose is not only clear but also concise. The trouble is that prolixity pays. Publishers can charge more for fat books. Says Journalist John McPhee, whose work has the finish of fine carpentry: "There are a lot of books around that smell of the tape recorder.
Writing is so difficult that if a writer is looking at words on paper, say the transcript of a tape recording, it's damn difficult to resist them. So a lot of books go on too long because he recorded too much."
For this sin, as for other literary offenses, writers should bear the most blame. Editors who are criticized for poor books frequently reply, "You should have seen the first draft." Sometimes untold hours are spent just to make the semiliterate printable. Editors may hold back because cutting an author's prose means nicking a famous ego.
It is a matter of author awe. Confesses Little, Brown's Young: "There is more hesitation about messing around with prose when you have a writer like Norman Mailer, Gay Talese, Herman Wouk, or a great man in another field like Henry Kissinger. I have a tendency to suggest things mildly, and if he doesn't listen I let it go." TIME asked a sampling of writers, editors and agents to name recent books that needed more editing. High on their lists were William Styron's Sophie's Choice, Mailer's Executioner's Song, Heller's Good as Gold, David Halberstam's The Powers That Be and, of course, Talese's book.
Self-regard can be even more rampant among newly successful writers who view their own crudities as an inviolate form of personal expression. But veteran best-selling Novelist Irving Wallace says: "Publishing houses bid now for books at auctions, and they often spend $1 million or $2 million for a book. The result is often unfortunate: words an author has written tend to become frozen on the tablet. I have heard friends say, 'Why should I change anything in my book? Look what they paid for it; it must be good!' "