Shattering the Idealistic Image of Editing for the Sake of Acceptance

“Why are you interested in publishing?” My professor, donning a mask with red dinosaurs to match her red framed glasses and glossy clogs looked over the classroom. This was last week. It was my first day of Dimensions of Editing: a class required for my graduate Publishing program(me… if you’re British don’t at me).

In preparation for the class I had thrown myself into the recommended textbooks about what editors really do, only to find that no one seemed to provide a precise and definitive answer. The work of publishing is elusive, the texts told me. Editors are mediators, but their work is behind-the-scenes, invisible.

The work of publishing is elusive, the texts told me. Editors are mediators, but their work is behind-the-scenes, invisible.

To my horror, talk of royalties and production management kept coming up. Being the idealistic lover of literature that I am, the involvement of marketing and profits seemed to tarnish the wholesome earnestness of the industry. I had pursued this career not because of money, but because of my passion for excellent literature. The feeling of impact and accomplishment that comes from cleaning up the grammar, finding just the right wording, and bringing a work to its full potential is what I was after.

Being the idealistic lover of literature that I am, the involvement of marketing and profits seemed to tarnish the wholesome earnestness of the industry.

My fiancé Eduards, aware of my concerns, would offer a practical truth: “People have to live.” But somehow, the negotiation over signed contracts mixed with the stigmas surrounding conglomerate publishing companies as greedy businesses didn’t seem to align with the honest humility of such a statement. I was only further crushed when I read that Goethe, perhaps the author I most admire, believed publishers to be “cohorts of the devil.”

These concerns bounced about incessantly in my mind as I waited to attend my first class session. I began to wonder if I had made a mistake. My faith in the literary industry as pure and undiluted threatened to collapse. I struggled with the fear that even passionate art could not escape the long-reaching arm of money.

My faith in the literary industry as pure and undiluted threatened to collapse.

I left my first class session with a still muddled and ambivalent mindset. I set out to read the assigned texts for next week’s class feeling disheartened, like a child who had suddenly gained an adult’s perspective. However, during my walk along the narrow sidewalk to my flat, I was somehow reminded of Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Keats wrote of a maiden and her lover who, frozen in time on the painted vase, would always be just about to kiss. Though their lips would never touch, Keats explains they also would never be cross with one another, and never be subject to the mercilessness of old age. His point is that the moment before actualization is a moment in which ideals and true satisfaction live. Once the thing you look forward to comes to fruition, your happiness is sure to go downhill.

…the moment before actualization is a moment in which ideals and true satisfaction live.

In dreaming about an editing career, I had made it into the pure and idealistic thing I had wanted it to be, rather than what it truly is. Like Petrarch who glorified Laura in his sonnets and therefore dehumanized her, I had stripped the publishing business of its reality. As with all passions in life, the false perfection that we build up around them must be shattered. It is only when we see the object of our love for what it really is that we can accept it with unconditional commitment.

As with all passions in life, the false perfection that we build up around them must be shattered. It is only when we see the object of our love for what it really is that we can accept it with unconditional commitment.

While a career in editing may not be the magically pure-intentioned position I had imagined it to be, I can be passionate about it in full view of its faults. That ideal of the editor who thinks only of the artistic integrity of the work is something I still plan to work towards in my career, but we must see things for what they really are to make meaningful progress.