Sublime

The conference between Maxwell Perkins and old Charles Scribner, when they met face-to-face, over the unprintable words in Hemingway’s manuscript has become publishing legend.

always offer my students this optional assignment: photocopy the story and go through it with a red pen, cutting it down to what feels like a more contemporary pace. Give it a faster clip, while trying to preserve the good things about it. Retype it, if you’re feeling ambitious. Read it fresh. Is it still working? Working better? Can you trim it by

In this way, as an editor he did more than reflect the standards of his age; he consciously influenced and changed them by the new talents he published.

The following passage by Enrique Hank Lopez, “Back to Bachimba,”