Lewis Lapham The Art of Editing No. 4
theparisreview.org
Lewis Lapham The Art of Editing No. 4
Editing[*] is deliberating—choosing a word or a thought, dismissing or advancing; it comes up often in this book as a way to describe artistic decision-making. And in my journalism career, editing had served me well. My temperament was well suited to it. I always had trouble writing—I was too self-conscious (you can see a pattern). And I couldn’t b
... See moreThose of us who are trying to write well about the world we live in, or to teach students to write well about the world they live in, are caught in a time warp, where literature by definition still consists of forms that were certified as “literary” in the 19th century: novels and short stories and poems.