Fiction Editor Research Articles

How to Talk about Books You Have Read

I don't do much public writing, but each month I persuade others to do it in my role as the fiction editor in chief of public Books, a twice-monthly online review that I cofounded with Caitlin Zaloom in 2012. On the first and fifteenth of each month, Public Books publishes six to eight essays about books, nonprint works, the media, the arts, and ideas, written mostly by academics but also by journalists, novelists, activists, and artists. In addition to traditional reviews, we publish roundtables, interviews, visual essays, and Public Picks, our annual lists of best books and films.

The Episodic Trollope and <em>An Editor's Tales</em>

This article considers how the figure of the fictional editor, and the idea of editing, illuminates ideas of selfhood, attention, and continuity in Trollope’s work. Focusing on An Editor’s Tales (1869–70), and The Way We Live Now (1875), I argue that the idea of the editor, and the act of editing, provided Trollope with a productive metaphor for thinking about the idea of the self in time. Trollope is drawn to a model of selfhood that bears comparison with Galen Strawson’s concept of a non-narrative or “episodic” self. Engaging with readings of Trollope as “situationist” or “akrasic,” my essay offers an alternative. I highlight the most extreme, “episodic” aspects of his writing, and consider how their formal manifestations affect our readerly response.

Več kot predgovor: »urednik« romana Pepita Jiménez

Pričujoči članek analizira pripovedno strukturo romana Pepita Jiménez, prvega in najboljšega dela španskega pisatelja Juana Valere, ter posebnosti njegovega domnevnega (fiktivnega) urednika. Leta 1872 objavljeni pisemski roman kaže številne poteze zlasti francoskih in britanskih predhodnikov iz 18. stoletja. Čeprav je njegov začetek dokaj arhetipski, pa to delo, ki je kljub zapleteni zgradbi in petim pripovedovalcem presenetljivo neobsežno, razkriva edinstveno figuro ekstradiegetičnega pripovedovalca-fiktivnega urednika, ki ni le napisal (literarnega) predgovora, temveč je tudi večkrat posegel v pripoved. Vrh vsega so njegovi komentarji pogosto v protislovju z njegovim lastnim predgovorom, katerega glavni namen je (bil) zajamčiti avtentičnost pisem in verodostojnost pripovedi. Avtor skozi aplikacijo Genettove teorije o pripovedovalcu (Figures III, 1972) ter paratekstu (Seuils, 1987) dokaže, da v tem primeru bistvo urednikove prefacialne in ekstradiegetične vloge v prvi vrsti ni avtentifikacija, pač pa usmerjanje pozornosti na proces avtentifikacije, ter da vprašanje verodostojnosti v romanu nikakor ni dialektične narave.

Editors’ Page

Editors’ Page Stephanie G’Schwind and Matthew Cooperman Since 2004, Colorado Review has proudly hosted the Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, celebrating the memory of Liza Nelligan, an accomplished literary fiction editor and also an alumna of CR’s home, the English Department at Colorado State University. This year’s winner is Amira Pierce, whose story “Anything Good Is a Secret” was selected by Kent Nelson. “This wonderful story,” writes Nelson, “set mostly in a small village in Egypt, has a quiet tone that accumulates through the story into an intense emotional background. The repression of the culture works under the surface to create a powerful longing of the spirit, and the observer, an American photographer named George, working at the edge of the desert, is brought back to a life he has drifted away from.” With summer now in the rearview, don’t fret if you didn’t find yourself anyplace more exotic than your own backyard. Beyond Amira Pierce’s Egypt, this issue’s other fine stories will take you to a garlic farm in Japan, where rumbling family dynamics threaten to implode (Michael Larson’s “Harvest”); small-town Wisconsin, where two reconnected friends share heartbreak and ghostly sightings (Greg Schutz’s “To Wound, to Tear, to Pull to Pieces”); and the rattlesnake-infested oil patch of West Texas, where a young girl discovers the true depth of her survival instinct (Elizabeth Wetmore’s “Valentine, 1976”). In nonfiction, Matthew Ferrence joins us with “Mos Teutonicus,” a beautiful essay that explores his encounters with bones—exposed, broken, venerated—and the related implications of ability and disability. And in “For the Sake of a Name,” Sarah Viren considers what it means to be named Sarah, examining the curious echoes that reverberate between her own life and that of the biblical Sarah. Welcome to the fall/winter issue. —stephanie g’schwind [End Page 1] Welcome to fall, with all its tangy effulgence. This issue of Colorado Review waves its harvest in your general direction. Election season’s ratcheting up, the garden’s getting leggy, climate change riots in the city streets. Unleafing trees focus the sensory complex. What is the smell of that green-into-yellow? Where is my coat, and who knows the almanac’s view? For the poems in this issue of CR that’s animals in the yard (Molly Damm’s “fossils,” Matthew Brady Klitsch’s foxes and otters, Joshua McKinney’s soaring hawk and humble earthworm). Or time at the window, aubade or dusk (Shara Lessley, Justin Runge, Pam Rehm), or myriad seething places (John Kinsella’s Western Australia, William Kelley Woolfitt’s Blue Ridge hollows, Michael McLane’s desert wells) or large and small happenings (Campbell McGrath’s enigmatic “pecha kucha,” Rosmarie Waldrop’s “Thinking” and “Doubting,” John Beardsley’s skewed locus amoenus). In a subjunctive mood, the world darkens to a point. And if/then, then others. I’m excited by the wonderful international offerings (and their translations) in this issue from Germany (Elke Erb), Sweden (Jonas Modig), Slovenia (Aleš Šteger), and Russia (Osip Mandelstam). “So much splendor stuns / the grounds of my acquaintance,” says Pam Rehm. May you savor the acquaintance of these poems. —matthew cooperman [End Page 2] Copyright © 2014 Center for Literary Publishing

A Conversation with Steve Almond and William Giraldi

A Conversation with Steve Almond and William Giraldi Ryan Bradley (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 154] STEVE ALMOND is the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently the story collection God Bless America, which features a Best American Short Stories 2010 selection, “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched,” and which won the 2012 Paterson Fiction Prize. A frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, the Rumpus and the Boston Globe, Almond is among the nation’s most arresting essayists on culture and politics. WILLIAM GIRALDI is the author of the novel Busy Monsters and fiction editor for the journal AGNI at Boston University. In addition to being a novelist and memoirist, Giraldi is also a literary critic whose essays and reviews appear frequently in the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books and the Daily Beast. His next two books, a novel and a memoir, are forthcoming from Norton. Both authors use humor to excavate the messy truths of human emotions. Fellow Bostonians and close friends for a decade, Almond and Giraldi allowed me to interview them outside their reading at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut, on October 18, 2011. [End Page 155] RYAN BRADLEY: How would you define voice in writing, particularly voice in short fiction? STEVE ALMOND: You’ve been writing more short fiction. Do you have a rap on voice? WILLIAM GIRALDI: I believe I’ve got a rap on voice. And by voice, you mean style, I take it. When you’re talking about voice, are you talking about the voice of the writer or the voice of the character himself? For example: Barry Hannah. He has a voice, a language, that’s pretty uniform throughout all his books, no matter which character’s perspective he’s writing from. But if you look at Steve’s short stories, the voice varies a little bit— ALMOND: A lot. GIRALDI: Depending on who the character is. So voice, or style, has to fit that character, his or her vision. Steve’s collection My Life in Heavy Metal—those stories all have the same theme of longing and of shame. ALMOND: No. That’s not true. GIRALDI: Of young people struggling to make it through their tumultuous lives. ALMOND: Wrong. Wrong. That’s a lie. Don’t listen to that. GIRALDI: But whether the story is in first person or third person, that voice shifts a little bit. It shifts because it has to match the vision of the character. So whenever you say “voice,” I think you’ve got to connect it to vision. Go ahead, Steve. It’s your turn. ALMOND: Well, let me give you an example of Billy’s early work because I know Billy’s early work pretty well. Like he knows mine not very well, actually. Totally mischaracterized my work! This is typical of young writers. Young writers want to be taken seriously. They want the world to take them seriously, and they think it’s important not to joke around, to not make light of anything, be like [End Page 156] Hemingway and Faulkner, all the badasses that get the big awards. So Billy’s early work, although it’s interesting, was pretty self-serious and curtailed. This was true of his fiction and nonfiction. It wasn’t bad. It was competent and occasionally had pathos, but it was very obedient. And then he showed me the book you’ll hear him read from tonight, Busy Monsters. The voice wasn’t just like the full range of Billy’s personality had gotten onto the page. It was as if he had found a voice that was an exaggerated version of who he is. His kind of machismo and his erudition and all the stuff that is in his personality that as a friend of his, I knew had been turned up to eleven. Which is, I think, my conception of voice. Voice is an effort to get onto the page a version of your natural speaking voice, edited into eloquence, amped up by the writerly attention you have while you’re at the keyboard. You’re saying about first...

REDAKTORIAUS VAIDMUO VERSTINĖS GROŽINĖS LITERATŪROS LEIDYBOJE

The goal of the article is to determine the role of editor in the publishing of translated fiction. The case study of editor’s role in the publishing of translated fiction is relevant in particular due to the popularity of translated fiction in Lithuania. As shown by the statistical analysis of Li­thuanian press (years 2000–2011), translated fiction print runs are almost two times higher than native fiction print runs.The problematics of translated fiction editor’s role is related to the editor’s interim position in the literary publishing process. The editor is between the author and the translator, and this determines the uncertainty of the editor’s role. In this context, the problematics of editor’s role is closely related to such aspects of translated fiction as translator’s and editor’s cooperation, literary quality of the translation, the publishing policy of the publishing house related to the literary quality of translated fiction. Various methods were used while writing this article. The interview method was used to perform the qualitative study. While using the document and source analysis method it was concluded that the editor is like the connective tissue between the author and the reader in the publishing process. The questionnaire and the comparison methods helped to uncover that editor’s role in the publishing of translated fiction is the dimension of text quality. It also revealed that the quality of the translated fiction literature highly depends on the com­munication between the editor and the translator.

Fichte, Carlyle and the British Literary Reception of German Idealism

AbstractThis article reconsiders the relationship of Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus to German Idealism in light of Frederick Beiser’s revaluation of Fichte’s influence on early German Romanticism in German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism (2002). Beiser claims that for Novalis, Hölderlin, and Friedrich Schlegel, “drama and novel became the only proper medium to explore and resolve philosophical problems.” I argue that Carlyle, like these writers, found in the representation of particular lives a unique literary form through which to further develop Fichte’s efforts to ground philosophical truth in individual moral action. In particular, the role of the fictional editor in Sartor Resartus foregrounds Carlyle’s Fichtean effort to work through the correspondences of his imagined German Idealist philosopher Diogenes Teufelsfdröckh’s biography and philosophy.

Re-thinking Nature, Fact and Fiction

In the halcyon days of publishing in Australia, in the 1970s and 1980s, the University of Queensland Press (UQP) established an innovative series on the Australian Environment edited by Alan Gilpin. The series emerged from the flourishing scientific, environmental and conservation discourses. This was not the only way, or even then the central way, UQP addressed environmental issues. On the one hand, the Press actively supported the emergence of an Australian postcolonial canon in fiction and poetry through (re)publishing the works of Steele Rudd, Vance Palmer and Peter Carey. In the need to develop an international market for their books, however, fiction editors could easily and did edit out descriptions of the Australian environments. On the other hand, the Press published technical studies such as a series on Australian Ecology. With the rupture in the management of the Press in 1983, the Australian Environment series was stopped. By the 1990s with the increasing recognition of the Australian Aboriginal way of thinking about country (and the delineation of Australasian territorial copyright) UQP pulled back from developing a global market in order to establish a successful Black Australian Writers series for, primarily, a national readership. The genre of 'bush realism' and other new writing by non-Indigenous Australians that drew on environmental differences of the 'new world' in contrast to the old, as a result, shifted away from central stage in narratives of the nation.

Tikkun at 25

<i>Tikkun</i> at 25

Black and white: in search of an ‘apt’ response to Indigenous writing

‘The good editor,’ suggests Thomas McCormack in his Fiction Editor, the Novel and the Novelist, ‘reads, and … responds aptly’ to the writer’s work, ‘where “aptly” means “as the ideal appropriate reader would”.’ McCormack develops an argument that encompasses the dual ideas of sensibility and craftas essential characteristics of the fiction editor. But at an historical juncture that has seen increasing interest in the publication of Indigenous writing, and when Indigenous writers themselves may envisage a multiplicity of readers (writing, for instance, for family and community, and to educate a wider white audience), who is the ‘ideal appropriate reader’ for the literary works of the current generation of Australian Indigenous writers? And what should the work of this ‘good editor’ be when engaging with the text of an Indigenous writer? This paper examines such questions using the work of Margaret McDonell and Jennifer Jones, among others, to explore ways in which non-Indigenous editors may apply aspects of McCormack’s ‘apt response’ to the editing of Indigenous texts.

News from the Editor’s Desk

News from the Editor’s Desk Hilda Raz Prairie Schooner is pleased to announce a new editorial position, Digital Development and Online Editor, and to introduce and welcome the person who will serve in this role: Timothy Schaffert. Schaffert is a native of Nebraska who grew up on a farm in Hamilton County and attended the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for his undergraduate degree. He traveled to the University of Arizona for his mfa. After that, he began to publish his stories and eventually three novels, The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters, The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God, and Devils in the Sugar Shop. His work has been acknowledged by the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers program, Book Sense Picks, a New York Times Sunday Book Review Editors’ Choice selection, and was shortlisted for an O. Henry Award. He has served as an editor for alternative newsweeklies, a contributor to Poets & Writers magazine, and a fiction editor for Sonora Review. He is the director of two literary nonprofits: the (downtown) omaha lit fest and the Nebraska Summer Writers’ Conference. When you wander the electronic landscape, as we all find ourselves doing so much more these days, look for Timothy Schaffert’s updates, posts, and other initiatives. We encourage you to find out more on our blog (prairieschooner.typepad.com), follow the mellifluously named tweets (@TheSchooner), and join our Facebook group (Fans and Friends of Prairie Schooner). Schaffert is extending our tracks in all these—and other!—directions, so click on us often to see what we’re up to and participate in the conversation. And to start, we ask you to join us in welcoming Timothy Schaffert. [End Page 7] Hilda Raz Luschei Professor and Editor Copyright © 2010 University of Nebraska Press

Esquire 's Failure with Hemingway's "Bimini "

Explores correspondence between Mary Hemingway and Gordon Lish, fiction editor of Esquire (1969–1976), about publication of the "Bimini" segment of Islands in the Stream in the October 1970 issue of the magazine. Reveals Mary's dissatisfaction with Esquire 's treatment of her husband's work, and Lish's dashed hopes that a posthumous appearance by Hemingway would boost the magazine's diminishing sales and stature in the literary community.

War of the Words

Page 6 American Book Review about the limitations of the Freudian model. We are daring ourselves to envision a selfhood beyond conventional selfhood while contemplating the devices by which we tell, retell, and untell ourselves. We are remembering Czesław Miłosz’s sparkling observation : “The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person.” Remembering Ludwig Wittgenstein’s: “One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word ‘I.’” Re-learning what Samuel Beckett, KathyAcker, Ben Marcus,Young-Hae Chang, Patrik Ourednîk, et al. have already taught us…but from within the text we are scripting instead of from without. Re-learning that every narratological move we make, every technique we employ, carries with it philosophical and political consequences, whether or not we can at first articulate them, whether or not at first we are even aware of them. Every time any of us speaks in a “creative” writing classroom, we also challenge us all to reflect upon the institutional framework in which our words sound—what a “workshop” is; what it might be; how it exists within the power fields of a given department; what economic purposes it serves, and what cultural; how the university expresses itself through it and us; how the larger culture does; how that might change; why we teach creative writing… Lance Olsen’s next novel, Head in Flames, will appear from Chiasmus this fall. He teaches innovative narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah and serves as chair of the Board of Directors at FC2, associate editor at ABR, and fiction editor at Western Humanities Review. Act Truly Julie Shigekuni Years ago, a therapist friend jokingly defended her style of handling interventions: “I decide what’s true, and I act accordingly.” I’d wondered how she could bear to hear people’s problems all day long, and I’ve continued through the years to reflect on her insight revealed to me in jest. I offer it here as my response to the question, “Why teach creative writing?” I can think of different responses, such as Richard Hugo’s smart assertion that a good creative writing course saves the young writer time and effort by teaching the writer early on what not to do—or the stance taken by several writers to whom I’ve posed this question that goes something to the tune of how the well being of any culture can be measured by its production of literature. I find both positions edifying; it’s hard to sidestep the appeal of a solid, altruistic answer. But the question for me remains personal, and I find that my friend’s half-joke’s halftruth provides a better, if more selfish, answer. As a writer, I decide what’s true, and I act accordingly. Decisions I make on the page often send me spiraling into a conundrum. I teach creative writing because engaging with students is my way out. Students don’t tolerate self-deceit. They’re hungry for discourse that feels satisfying, and in interacting with them, I must change the way I think—often in surprising ways, always in ways that I had not imagined on my own—and thereby must change what I write. In the years since I began teaching, I’ve come back to the position that led me to teach creative writing in the first place. I write having tried other things and failed. I wish I could sing, or dance, or spend my days in a white lab coat. But since I don’t have the talent or the training, I write. I observe what other people do, and I document what I see in a way that makes sense to me.And when I emerge from this difficult task of attempting to set myself straight, I enjoy the company of other writers who have been similarly preoccupied. Writers need writers, and writing programs offer writers a venue. This clustering of writers who are necessarily solitary creatures leads to other questions that concern me: such as what does it mean when a good poem written by a woman of color becomes...

A Statistical Analysis of Editorial Influence and Author Character Similarities in 1990s New Yorker Fiction

We present a quantitative analysis of 442 pieces of fiction published between 5 October 1992 and 17 September 2001 in the New Yorker magazine. We address two independent questions using the same data set. First, we examine whether changes in the Executive Editor or Fiction Editor are associated with significant changes in the type of fiction published at the New Yorker. Second, we examine whether New Yorker authors write fiction more often than not about characters with whom they share demographic traits. We find that changes in Fiction Editor at the New Yorker are associated with numerous significant, quantifiable changes in the magazine's fiction and that these effects are greater than those associated with a change in the New Yorker's Executive Editor. We also find that authors of New Yorker fiction write significantly more often than not about protagonists who share their race, gender, and country of origin and who are within or below their age range. The same is true of secondary characters except in the case of gender.

"Die pilgernde Törin": Genesis, Revaluation, and Mirroring in Goethe's Wanderjahre

The critical revaluation of the structure and content of Goethe's Wanderjahre in the past three decades has allowed most scholars to agree that the novel presents, not one narrative point of view, but many, indeed an archive of perspectives embodied in manuscripts and fragments from a wide cast of characters, assembled into the novel's present form by a fictional editor. Goethe is thereby credited having anticipated the modern novel by his dispersal of the function of the author or narrator among a plethora of independently responsible narrators.1 Because no particular narrator is privileged as authoritative, the implied is obliged to participate actively in appropriating and understanding the text, almost as if it were fragments of reality to be processed.2 The primary structural principles by which Goethe organizes his materials and suggests ways for the reader to order and understand them are two: First, Wilhelm recedes as the center of attention and becomes a string on which to thread various stories and events that come to his attention.3 Second, the various materials mirror each other—not necessarily in sequence or pairs but as pieces whose themes or motifs reinforce, recall, illuminate, relativize, or call into doubt the perspectives expressed in other mirroring pieces through the novel.4 As scholars reassess individual units of narrative in the Wanderjahre in light of this new paradigm of its archival structure, those elements, such as embedded novellas, that don't seem to mirror major plot lines, themes, or other narrative materials have tended to be devalued Die pilgernde TA¶rin is one such element. Although Goethe occupied himself this novella off and on for a period of nearly 40 years, scholars have thus far linked it mainly to the love triangle of Hersilie-Felix-Wilhelm, which outwardly resembles the TA¶rin's situation between the elder and younger Revannes.The Hersilie triangle, however, turns out to be a dead end thematically: Wilhelm is already married, Hersilie sees only her own image in Felix's eyes, and the father-son relationship is in the end far more significant than either man's relationship Hersilie.5 It seems to me that Die pilgernde TA¶rin, with its depiction of two noblemen in the main plot and a noble youth featured in her tragicomic song, in fact mirrors a much more significant element of the novel, the Lenardo saga. As Hans Vaget has pointed out, Goethe was preoccupied in all his novels the reform of the nobility as the key to combating what he considered the ill effects of the French Revolution, and Lenardo becomes the

Lucky Strike (review)

Nancy Zafris, fiction editor of the Kenyon Review, author of The Metal Shredders and winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, adds to a notable list of credentials with her second novel, Lucky Strike. The setting is 1950s Utah, site of the Cold War–provoked "uranium frenzy," in which countless amateur prospectors, hoping to strike it rich, unwittingly subjected themselves to radiation. Widowed Jean Waterman instinctively distrusts the idea of a "lucky strike," but she brings her bright daughter, Beth, [End Page 199] and her ill son, Charlie, to the desert canyons anyway, hoping they can genuinely share in the excitement before they too become jaded. Jean's strange jumble of positive and negative thinking attracts a host of like-minded characters, all of them suffering from the same mixed assessments of the world and what it has to offer: Jo Dawson, a squatter on the Waterman campsite, plainly desperate for companionship beyond that of her oafish husband; Harry, a lapsed Mormon traveling salesman who falls in love with both Jean and Jo; Miss Dazzle, proprietor of the Stagecoach Oasis motel, ever genial but more lonely than she cares to admit; and many others. Using an ensemble of narrators, Zafris achieves quite an interesting pace, admirable, yet a bit disorienting. Readers of Lucky Strike may convince themselves that not a lot is happening in the story, though in fact the plot involves a gunfight, a plane crash, helicopter rides, claim jumping and quite a few bawdy motel scenes. There's a reason for the discrepancy: many of these events are quickly introduced and then left unpondered—by every narrator, but especially by the theatrical Beth, who, like any twelve-year-old, takes it upon herself to choose what is and is not important, often choosing wrong. After dutifully completing the reading list she's been assigned for school, Beth begins narrating her own story, not quite objectively, inventing opportunities to use her new vocabulary—words like detonation and delectable. Lucky Strike begins to read like just such a book report; the characters highlight certain words they love, and people, and experiences, leaving others behind. They stretch the truth, stake claims that cannot register, and yet do. Hence Harry's love for both Jean and Jo seems perfectly sincere, as does Jean's relentless anxiety over her children at the same time that she neglects to read any of her own mother's letters. The characters in this book feel conflicting emotions constantly, repeatedly, as if, again and again, they're all falling for the same joke. It's Beth who looks for the explanation. Aloft in the impressive Vincent Flaherty's helicopter, she searches the view of the river for a sign from God. Life is not just brown, she discovers. Life is a zigzag. "Ha, that was it!" she quickly congratulates herself, only to reflect a moment later that "she would have liked something a little more personal." Every character in Lucky Strike wants this—a way to have their unsophisticated stories told, sophisticatedly. Unfortunately, this can't happen—the desert won't allow it. Zafris is at her best when she lets her setting invade her characters' narratives, when the [End Page 200] desert atmosphere becomes the villain furtively driving the heroes on, to whatever damage or danger. "I guess convincing yourselves is about the only thing left to do in the desert," one character remarks near the end, and, fittingly, no one can think of a response. Finding uranium is just a pretext for what these characters are really hoping to find. But there is no guide for them, only their own suspicions, and the suspicions echoed by the treasure-seekers who have already come and gone. By the end, when the ghostly voices of the canyons appear, audibly and visually, it is truly eerie, and we join in with the desert's final entreaty to the characters we've come to care for. You shouldn't be here, whisper the...

Fantasy Theme Analysis in the Interplay of Charles M. Sheldon's In His Steps and his Jesus Newspaper

This article applies fantasy theme analysis to explore the remarkable work of the Reverend Dr. Charles M. Sheldon, a Congregationalist minister. Fantasy theme analysis is used to examine the rhetorical vision that emerges from Sheldon's work. In 1897 Sheldon published In His Steps, a best-selling novel, and gained international recognition. This novel depicted ordinary people who were inspired to make decisions by asking themselves "What would Jesus do?" In the novel, a newspaper editor applied the question to his business and altered his advertising and editorial policies to conform to standards he believed Jesus would practice. In 1900 Sheldon was invited to become that fictional newspaper editor in person and lead a daily newspaper from March 13 to March 17, 1900. This research examines the way Sheldon's approach to journalism formed a web of meaning for his audience that led to a shared worldview. Using the "What would Jesus do?" question, Sheldon created a rhetorical vision for his readers. The fictional world described in the novel was reproduced in real life as Sheldon's rhetorical vision spread through his work in the daily newspaper. The rhetorical vision suggested in Sheldon's newspaper work is a middle-class haven where no one drinks alcohol, and wealth is not hoarded. According to the rhetorical vision, the "What would Jesus do?" question provides a wide variety of answers to life's complex questions.

How unreliable is Humbert inLolita?

i t is notoriously difficult to make sense of Humbert's claim in the novel's final three paragraphs that he started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita, first in the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion.1 He asserts impressive productivity during his confinement. Motivated by his original intention to these notes in toto at his trial (p. 308), we gather that he leaves his fictional editor, Dr. John Ray, Jr., well over three hundred pages of manuscript which Ray publishes intact after a few minor corrections (p. 3). But the question remains whether Humbert spends the entire last eight weeks of his imaginary life writing. He is in failing health and faces an imminent trial date, so every day must count. Yet a close examination ofthe pointedly detailed chronology of his last nine chapters throws his writing time awry by three days. Ray says on the novel's first page that the protagonist died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952 (p. 3). If we assume that Humbert's first and last use of the title minutes before his heart failure decisively marks its hurried completion, he should have begun his manuscript on 22 September.2 But it is not easy to square this assumption with the book, which leaves him free on that day to collect and read Dolores' letter. Furthermore, he remains at liberty to pursue his insomniac three-day hunt through Coalmont, Ramsdale, and Parkinton to Pavor Manor (pp. 266-93), where he seems to take an hour to kill Clare Quilty on the morning of 25 September (pp. 293-308). Critics have attributed this important factual contradiction to two pos? sible principals. We can convict an artfully unreliable narrator (Humbert Humbert) whose ego still throbs with the certainty that he manipulates time along with the sympathies of his readers as he works against the clock to tie up his narrative threads: thus, he neatly, but implausibly, settles the destinies of the three main characters with a reconciliatory visit to Dolores and revenge on Quilty.

How Unreliable Is Humbert in Lolita ?

It is notoriously difficult to make sense of Humbert's claim in the novel's final three paragraphs that he "started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita, first in the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion." 1 He asserts impressive productivity during his confinement. Motivated by his original intention to "use these notes in toto" at his trial (p. 308), we gather that he leaves his fictional editor, Dr. John Ray, Jr., well over three hundred pages of manuscript which Ray publishes "intact" after a few minor corrections (p. 3). But the question remains whether Humbert spends the entire last eight weeks of his imaginary life writing. He is in failing health and faces an imminent trial date, so every day must count. Yet a close examination of the pointedly detailed chronology of his last nine chapters throws his writing time awry by three days. Ray says on the novel's first page that the protagonist "died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952" (p. 3). If we assume that Humbert's first and last use of the title minutes before his heart failure decisively marks its hurried completion, he should have begun his manuscript on 22 September. 2 But it is not easy to square this assumption with the book, which leaves him free on that day to collect and read Dolores' letter. Furthermore, he remains at liberty to pursue his insomniac three-day hunt through Coalmont, Ramsdale, and Parkinton to Pavor Manor (pp. 266-93), where he seems to take an hour to kill Clare Quilty on the morning of 25 September (pp. 293-308). Critics have attributed this important factual contradiction to two possible principals. We can convict an artfully unreliable narrator (Humbert Humbert) whose ego still throbs with the certainty that he manipulates time along with the sympathies of his readers as he works against the clock to tie up his narrative threads: thus, he neatly, but implausibly, settles the destinies of the three main characters with a reconciliatory visit to Dolores and revenge on Quilty. [End Page 71] Or we can convict an author (Vladimir Nabokov) who is defiantly unwilling to be enslaved to dates (like the early Dickens), or prone to errors with them. 3

Foreword

Foreword For the sake of freshness and for the careers of its authors, The Missouri Review likes to find, edit and pubUsh fine writing without holding it very long. We don't keep a vault of material accepted years ago in order to fiU future issues. The peril of this approach is that we are always a little on the edge, under the gun to get out the issue, sometimes stretching our editors-in-training to the limit. But the wonder of it'is that with luck to go along with the hard work, a classic issue sometimes takes shape. Among the memorable pieces in this issue are the Knopf feature, the absorbing interview with writer Antonya Nelson and the two essays—Amy Kolen's "Living WiU" and Spencer Nadler's personal meditation on early Alzheimer's. The issue's fiction is topped off by BiU McCauley's tragic stunner, "Mr. Henry's Trousers," and Dana Johnson's Uvely first story pubUcation, "Melvin in the Sixth Grade," and its poetry by selections from Ellen Hinsey's long-awaited second collection, which is now in manuscript. Editorial interns are accepted to the staff of this magazine after careful screening. They interview with one or more of the editors; then, as a test, they are hurled headlong into the manuscript-reading process. For several hours they read and comment on story, essay or poetry submissions . The judgments they make in this chaUenging exercise are important in determining whether they're in or out. For us, the internscreening process pretty much repUcates the manuscript-screening one in that there are the occasional must-accepts and a lot of interested applicants who—despite their clear abiUties—raise questions in our minds. Our current staff of young editors-in-training is one of the most impressive that we've had in years. Early in the training of this current group, we spent one Tuesday afternoon talking aboutmanuscript editing. They learned that the worst mistake an editor can make, from the line-edit to the realm of acquisitions , is to assume that he or she knows aU the answers. By avoiding coUaboration, by not consulting authorities, whether it is The Chicago Manual ofStyle or another editor, they run the risk of making mistakes. When it comes to the realm of acquisitions, the mistakes can have major impact. What if you personally reject a latter-day "Barn Burning"? In this issue, we feature some fascinating examples of editorial decisions —some of them dramatic mistakes—from the Knopf archives. The Knopf editors usuaUy understood the caUber of the work they were reading, but at the same time they have always had to include in the formula of their decisions the questionable projections regarding the marketabiUty of a book or author. Thus, they firmly rejected a flawed novel, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, then reconsidered it partly due to the author's rising celebrity foUowing her suicide. Their readers' criticisms of the book were soUd, but they misjudged Plath's importance as a writer. Or they rejected novelist John Barth because he seemed too long-winded and quirky to seU. In other cases, for example Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, they made decisions based on distaste for subject matter or a sense that it was simply too risky. One of the more interesting aspects of this feature is that it shows accompUshed editors, as far back as the 1950s, basing decisions on authors' previous pubUcation records. Although they tremendously admired Jorge Luis Borges' stories, they rejected them because the author had been an obscure smaU-magazine-publishing author for so many years. To Ulurninate the Knopfreaders' reports, we talked with KnopfSenior EditorAshbel Green. In that interview, Green speaks of the enthusiasm that he still feels when he encounters a talented new voice and of the experience, which he beUeves editors in general have, of waking up with the hope they might find something they love. In our 1996 interview with the late Wilham Maxwell, the former New Yorker fiction editor recaUed: "On the days I had to work at the New Yorker, I always shaved with pleasure, tfunking, 'Tm about to take the train and go be an editor...