A Word on Words; 3622; Gary Fisketjon

he's been liz from national television studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this word on workers with jobs on dancing in the once again welcome to learn words we're back this week for a second part interview with derek this could john welcome

to our own weren't thinking it's great and kerry has been done with those he's the winner of the two thousand and six not perkins award the highest honor in american position among other things and if you have that war and you know you don't need a poet was known ineffable i like to live there because they're going where ward should goes to writers rather than the editors and i think the maxwell perkins would be rolling over in his grave if he knew that there was an award named after him the family had he had a good view of this thing into service the writer's work that matter of the other traditions but i think the background or did you write it better than that the threat had effects could be here and when we left off last week we were getting into inside the head of the new premier editor and new york publishing that's my judgment and that's one of many others in this with so much at eleven and natural

we're going to new york and making this great her contribution to american literature when you edit the manuscript of writers and by this time as we said that we the market decided that the agent convinced julie found a manuscript like a bird something foster about you got a potent it sounds as if when you get into the business of put mint green ink paper you really sort of in the zone in an intimate been a mindset with a very good way of putting it because you really ideally you put yourself into a kind of trance where you're thinking as much like the rider is thinking about what you're thinking you have to sink in that were particular riders war is going away because you're trying to tell where that writer is kind of the attitude at war and say no that's not quite

right but you do get into canada spell i mean at the time flies by i mean if i do five pages in editing in an hour of them feel like that i want to do that's exactly what it and that didn't matter whether of cormac mccarthy are some fresh from the emperor's one of regional i think takes that walter reed ph carefully even if you're not making a lot of comments you still have to retake territory and i'm i think that puts you went into kind of a zone as you say and the fewer distractions about or women for that reason i'm doing much better at it and then here in tennessee we have a farm that in new york with a found always ringing of our was somebody coming by somebody wants to see you somebody once have a meeting that that roland needed a friend and you really have to kind of keep to yourself in a way and and that's the

fun part the phones it's the deepest reading you can americans a minute it's amazing that people get paid money to do it so what kind of really see them piece of work coming together and you understand it there and you can also talk about it or we get it both didn't do it's derived from that process keep on giving and i don't know that i could've i would be happy publishing any other way and as i say a much rather do that than here used to be when i was a kid i'd go out to dinner to come back into port rings for editing at midnight and work for four five hours and get up at eight o'clock you've probably never a good idea but it in a possibility that out much better to do it when you're sharp and ann can get into that frame of mind where

you're in that book and i think about something outside the book in thinking about what you want to do later this afternoon you'd just really on that desert zone and into so i mean do you have to screen out extraneous issues that we talked last week in depth about your relationship with jay mcinerney starts it wouldn't win your buttons and then continues on through that period where you put his first smash hit by lights big city and i'm in and brings him fame and a man fleeting sort of reading fortunes well i think that in the end and end so and and so you know in small bump mccarthy i guess you came into a relationship and editing relationship with them in a different way

our authors are new to you and you have to be a new cool with every one of them you have to treat everybody exactly the same sometimes people would say poorly or like a jerk but he gave everybody the ultimate consideration which failed reduced more carefully than anybody else ever will and not pull any punches i've heard i work with corbett all on a number of books and we are our great friend and he said previous through our association people are afraid at somebody like me so i never get to know what they really think that's not doing anybody any favors norman mailer i've heard him say the same thing he was a friend of mine but i never worked with some people say oh don't don't intrude upon norman mailer or won't you owe it to a ryder two when crude

not mindlessly very carefully but i've never had anybody or always with a careful editing because at it and that it is not a matter of a change it's a suggestion of the writer takes up modifies ignoring what ever on an ever changing manuscripts because it's not my manuscript changed but i'll ever know everybody that considerations and whether their friends complete strangers famous unknown they all deserve that really do does that do you ever think about their personality as well about their problems a own units and not producing again i come back to maxwell perkins it was said that in all that too well to get hemingway and then and fitzgerald and m

and thomas wolfe the kids then he would soon the little presence will give some towns in for a book from the bottom some classic for you always year there is of editorial you know the kind of any relation and which is kind of distinct otherwise you treat people and that he can help them out of their speak at some people some riders are needy and others but it's there are a host of different friendships are developed from between rider but for me there's always a friendship aspect to it there is yeah because you're uribe we have a lot of things in common you the writer certainly likes what he or she wrote you like it because you picked that you spent a lot of time working together even though it's the opera's book and i was count myself as the office from an advocate within

the great big publishing company i mean they'll get to know me and eventually a number of other people in the company that i'm with an appointment and i'm looking out after their interests amongst my colleagues and you want to have that offers faith if they think you'd be lazy or haphazard ed wouldn't want a lazy haphazard lawyer and resistance that there isn't a concern the office park about the dual role you have a can out on one and year vice president of corporate offices and on the other you are a book editor hugh of their editor i should hope that i think if they get to know me they could if they had any preparation of that sort that they'd see that i don't i i don't see a complex

myself because i think that if i'm doing my best job on the riders be anthem also doing my best job for the company read somewhere that richard ford maybe sen kerrey is not my other things he is the person with whom i had a model yeah that that was a very neatly very apt way to put it because i think it's easy for people to miss understand the basic nature of everything and they say oh the other to go through makes changes that and then comedian as richard says dnc gives him the opportunity because of the writers coastal activists themselves to one big really are and good writers know how to do that but there's still editing something that they worked over countless times and somebody who sleep for from outside and play with the game here they knew this was a quite right

so it's it's it's not collaborative because the creativity that never comes from the order only from the author and a letter where rick let me just ask you about also offers an interview with an aunt minnie eschewed through physically think to feeling about the words trip down below long been a great hero of mine again he was one of those writers who i was reading an adoring when he wasn't selling any books at all but we had an occasion to work together it in paperback editions of i think probably five maybe six of his novel before he caught on with white noise he's a great writer no doubt about it i'd read him again

well before i was in publishing and reading and devotedly and he had a very strong relationship with a great band called up workers' comp who had voted william faulkner who discovered ralph ellison also discovered cormac mccarthy and i start work requirement on our work was still alive but i told his agent i said i'm not interfering with that relationship and it's something i never do but that case certainly not but it was decided that climate change is publisher of conduct an option and so i initially edited fifty pages of messages no i do it coming through the dc don't like about that we don't need to know about but we've had a great relationship and of his fellow writer i mean that i think that everybody comes up with a short list of the

greatest living american novelists if he's on virtually all were short lists as is below such a strange man i think a lot of the academic program where we had roe no time sports jacket there is is the idea that you know you want to save your father and found a raymond carver special case i think when you think about them and life there is nothing there is no real test their job he didn't have it in many cases through the miserable as they get fired for he had a very hard life which started when he was very young he married young had children young he had no resources whatsoever but he had a burning devotion and commitment to writing and turning himself into the battery possibly could we met

after i've reviewed his second book review for the village voice and of that running random house said he think is that pretty good and so i think he's the best short story writer in america two weeks ago after him who rate already had a contractor truth that i call them up and he said handsome funny to tell us and raymond carver there is no no matter how religious and i said explain to it was the city it's a record raw declared bankruptcy a couple of times he didn't like the seals called on the other you didn't know who who are quite a bit but we became fast friends and he had turned a corner in his own life he quit drinking he'd really call it a second chance in life than in the next for four years the same acclaim pretty much

universally for what a great orator he was a fan always felt like pinching himself i think you know that i would hope it might happen but in a really thought could have given our don't know were terribly well but i read that book of hers of her first book democratic political damage my boss gave me a copy of the neeson as shorty read it so that i live and i read it and set of having lunch and i say we got to do this and he said well he's a contestant you probably worried that it's not a big this vast sprawling thing like commercial stuff should be if too well with the commercial but its and its subject and tanner it's too commercial to be literary i said don't worry about that as those terms of categories don't mean anything anyway how do you come in contact with the japanese rival

i grew the market they've actually that's safe to ray carver because ruthie and we met i should think about nineteen eighty five and who rick he was already involved in translating all of ray's work and japanese that route he was such a popular writer in japan that guaranteed to raise books were also big bestseller but we became friends them and he had a publisher i read a couple of his books and kind of sample translations used to teach japanese kids had read english but they didn't want to do that but it was for ruby they were rating they would do it and he said was a terrible translations very good books either and he was published by tropical could not so well donald's about his publishing dance dance dance next spring he said

often i mean the book is sort of that as a subsequent book calls of the area where said no no don't read that you are as oh i like your work is that i like to read it or maybe what i'm working on now the very very kind of boston or three is an impeccable standard until he was hard on itself fairly large areas of hurricane but we've now publishing a rookie for about fifteen year of about a dozen books each one selling better than one before he's an amazing amazing writer what do you make the publishing world that and politically through fiction you turn to new york times the solace and i'm glad the time to sort of broadened its listen to

trade paperback next month right at it and i think that really is fairer the author and leader of one or you make of the fact that everything you think of that every time you pick up that sunday book they're those same names in american farmer john grisham family owns the publisher why your actions are a kind of an order that we don't get the manuscript every year and i've toured with me i registered with first book the chief rival is a real power like i can't really minimal and i've heard i've heard so much of song burnt and i just don't want to go there is or and and then they are in their arms elisa's family in you know drive to be scott turow an unlocking a bookstore you know it's what you say the writers who find their job was not done under the i'm going to try to write to that to that the scenario that some of the political appointees a recipe

for disaster because it has it never were i mean in the same way that with a literary writers people will ray carver was probably the most influential writer i've seen him live for years around the business and much more widely imitated than any other riders like think of was imitations were horrible because if you have the original would crew master of that and people trying to pretend to be something someone they aren't the hard to tell a difference and you know was withdrawn her writings since i don't understand any of that or all i always tend to tell people who even if there were many presidents were reading i said i don't think of it as a genre i mean people don't i think harold robinson he was a great writer oh he wasn't that he didn't he didn't think he was writing crummy

books that people would like you have to believe in what you're doing no matter what that is and he was you know he was very well you just talk about that do wrong with because the editing is son is the most i guess the most intriguing and maybe at times the most exhilarating part of an out of work when you get someone like mccarthy and when carter and have occasionally really help mold that work the other side of that and it's part of the racism that the corporate titan year then you have to worry about promoting the book marketing a book tone that would be put on the book with you to really offer or lose a lot of money advertising the book there's a book again and hundreds of the decision to go into the actual published a new book but but that's great too because it and everything i think i worked in corporate publishing of work in independent publishing i

don't care i don't know recognize any differences between the two i get to work with a bunch of very talented people whether they're working in the publicity and promotion jacket design i take enormous pleasure dealing with the financial people who are invariably written off his suitor been cameras you are somehow a hostile to the notion of great writing great blocks that true and i also discuss the idea of a lone wolf publishing where you'll hear some great genius with him do everything no one can do everything and i loved working with colleagues who have the same ideals align and whose experience would be very different than mine and far superior mine in many respects that is great when i hear about the problems of publishing and the

anonymity the whole issue about making money is a crucial than i'd thought stephen king then they're not censoring a lot since i'm a lot he recently took some snoddy shots i thought that the publishing industry has been quite good please write very well i don't i never quite knew what to make of it because i have great regard for that guy and he was he did before i got into publishing remain huge and he and now been given he makes contracts where he gets more than a typical office or share that as private i don't care what he gets paid or how he gets paid but he's done extremely well in the public well he tried also a couple years ago probably three or four back to offer a book i'm alive and so anybody could

call it up and then pay what they thought it might the war if you have read that chapter what didn't work out so hot publishers are now was the publishers sale more often than they succeed and that's always been the case and always will be the case doesn't mean that they're trying their level best to succeed or that they're somehow going into it with insurer motives i've enjoyed the publishing end of things because i see people who are every bit as committed to what they're doing as writers are committed to what they're writing what we do best and that's a fascinating life in a week i was of quail against would seem to me as stupid and criticisms because our own standards and i thought his word faggot

let me ask you are in the central time there was an i wish we would have maybe we will lose their luster for down the road about a minute left as your book you write about this great career you've met this intersection with with gifted men and women who haven't reached the lives of the people who read that book so i wouldn't even want to read much less safe to crumble right i've been extraordinarily lucky was doing it with friends and had the writers of that to work with a peep the publishers of that to publish was so it's a global community of that friend all across europe and elsewhere rather live that well that's right and so we ran out of america thank you for thinking you might see fixing thanked all of evil watching for lower than done say

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