THE SECOND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS

Abstract

THE SECOND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS1 BY THEODORE C. BLEGEN It is pleasant to see ideas turn into manuscripts, manuscripts into printers' proofs, and proofs into published books, with title pages and binding and nicely stamped "backbones." The job is finished, ready for its circle of readers (if any) and the not always tender mercies of the reviewer, who, one devoutly hopes, will get beyond the blurb, preface, and table of contents. The editor rejoices when his book comes out - and the travail of giving birth to it is soon forgotten: the hours of work, the hunt for misprints which lurk in places that the eye glides over, the long correspondence, the task of revision, the sparring with strong-willed authors, the dickering with printers, the closing of contracts, the designing of title pages and jackets, the measurement of pages, the matching of footnote numbers, the conferences with typographers, the writing of blurbs. These and other little editorial episodes fade from one's mind - until one opens the newly published book and promptly discovers a misprint that is forever beyond the power of correction. But even a leering misprint - the unhappy aftereffect of a disease known as "proofreader's myopia" - cannot dispel a certain glow of satisfaction. It is pleasant to hold the book in one's hands - pleasanter still to have a row of more than thirty books, as in the NorwegianAmerican Historical Association - books that one trusts will stand up in quality of content as impressively as they stand up on the bookshelf. The end result of the editor's job is, of course, book production . His business is to get books written, edited, and 1 This address, now slightly revised for publication, was delivered at the silver anniversary meeting of the Norwegian- American Historical Association in Northfield , Minnesota, October 6, 1950. 149 150 THEODORE C. BLEGEN published, and he knows that these things do not happen by pushing a button or invoking some magic charm. They are planned for and worked for. The task of an editor is one of imagination and sweat, ideas and drudgery, dreams and work, running errands, inspiration, "running heads," chapter titles, and indexes. It is remarkable, in a review of the work of this Association for twenty-five years, to realize how much of our publication was planned in advance. Relatively little has fallen like ripe fruit into our hands, finished except for printing and binding, though we have had some good luck. Most of our production has come from stimulation and encouragement, suggestions of things worth doing, earnest urging, conferences , letters, sometimes the promise of specific assistance of one kind or another. Many things have been started that were never finished. Some things have been finished that could not be published. Many things we dreamed of have not been done because we lacked energy or time or means or success in our hunt for others to do them or to join us in doing them. We have had profit and loss. But we have never failed to profit by looking critically at work yet to be done, by studying, not our achievements, but our failures and blind spots, by scolding ourselves about what we have not succeeded in doing. If I could draw any lesson from such measure of success as we may have had in this quarter century, it is that we have accompanied review with challenge, appraisal of things done with study of things to be done. I have amused myself recently by looking over an appalling number of reports, annual and triennial , that I wrote in the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's to the Association and its Executive Board. I claim no great insight or wisdom for these reports, but I can truthfully say that I have never given a report to this Association that has not presented a program for the future, that has not in some sense challenged the Association. One of these, published in THE SECOND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 151 1942, was called Planning for the Future . Four years earlier Dr. Bjork and I prepared an extensive document entitled A Review and a Challenge. Often we have presented programs of publication that ran far...