Every year, there is a controversy at the Man Booker prize; this year, it is all about the work of editors. Or rather, the supposed lack of work that editors are doing.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, chair of the judges, implicitly blamed editors for the poor quality of some of this year’s submissions while announcing the 2018 shortlist: “We occasionally felt that inside the book we read was a better one, sometimes a thinner one, wildly signalling to be let out.” Fellow judge Val McDermid went further by suggesting modern editors don’t know what they’re doing. “I think,” she said, “young editors coming through are not necessarily getting the kind of training and experience-building apprenticeship that happened when I was starting out.”
As an editor, my immediate reaction was to bite back. Yes, I’ve read a few saggy titles over the past few months. (Two of them crime novels endorsed by none other than Val McDermid.) And when you read a book you think is overlong, it’s hard not to wonder why it wasn’t cut into shape. But I’d still caution against the reflexive tendency to blame editors. A title belongs to an author, first and last. We at the publishing end are there to make suggestions, not to implement changes with an iron rod. If an author is determined to save a few darlings that we want to slaughter, it’s their call. We can’t force a writer to do anything. Nor should we try.
I’m yet to meet an editor who doesn’t work hard on the books they take on, and who doesn’t take pride in that work. But I can see how problems arise. Editing takes effort and skill, and it’s carried out by humans – and we all make mistakes. Maybe those mistakes multiply if you have a large number of titles on your list; I’ve certainly heard enough complaints from editors at the Big Five about being forever distracted by spreadsheets and meetings, ending up as much a product manager as an artistic facilitator.
One of the best decisions my fellow editor Eloise Millar and I made after setting up Galley Beggar Press was to limit ourselves to just a few titles a year. That way, if our books require it, we have the time to apply focus and effort. We’ve spent months, sometimes years, editing novels, trying to check the flow and sense of each individual sentence, as well as working on all the wider questions of structural flow. We’ve laboured long over obstacles that lie between the reader and the author’s vision. Most importantly – and enjoyably – we’ve had endless back–and–forth with our writers as they carried out improvements. But in spite of our comparatively luxurious set up, we too have bumped up against deadlines and problems.
But an editor is only ever as good as their author. And yes, that can be pretty great – but any renown an editor gets still comes by association. Max Perkins owes his fame to writers such as F Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe; Gordon Lish matters because he worked with Raymond Carver – not the other way round. Writers are the ones bringing the inspiration and craft and they are responsible for the end results. It is their names that go on the covers, and they are the ones who get nominated for big prizes.
Quite right, too. Although by that token, I’d also plead for sympathy when editors are pilloried by the judges of those prizes.
• Sam Jordison is an editor and founder of Galley Beggar Press.
