In which LARB’s James Simenc reflects on Editorial Boot Camp

by James Simenc

I felt guilty for years over a speech I gave at my eighth grade graduation. The assignment was simple: reflect on my years at the school, and list 10 lessons that my fellow classmates and I had learned. I began with the obvious platitudes — one, respect your peers; two, success requires hard work; three, learning is fun — until I got to six. “And finally,” I said, “always round up.” Which is exactly what I did, leaving off lessons seven, eight, nine, and ten. The audience loved it. I had to hold for laughter, something I’d never experienced before, and as a 14-year-old kid it sure felt sweet.

After the ceremony I waded through the crowd toward my family. A friend’s older brother stopped me to compliment my speech, and to ask how I came up with such a funny joke. That was when I felt my dad’s hand squeeze my shoulder. The bubble of satisfaction in my gut imploded as he said, “Wasn’t he great? Making his parents proud.” He didn’t tell anyone that the rounding joke was his idea.

Thinking back on it now, after having completed the LA Review of Books’ editorial training program, I realize that my dad was simply being a good editor. I gave him a rough draft with an incomplete list of life-lessons (so much for work ethic — I gave up after I got to five) and he suggested a clever solution that fit my voice. Then, when the opportunity arose, he took pride in the quality of the work and kept quiet about the specifics of his involvement. A skilled editor never edits and tells.

But at the time, I felt like I had cheated, like the part of my work that people enjoyed most wasn’t actually my work. I had done the unspeakable and used the h-word — help.

It’s hardly surprising that I’ve had such a sense of academic guilt. Schools these days (at least the ones I attended) beat students over the head with their zero-tolerance integrity policy. Through high school and undergrad, nearly every syllabus I received was stamped with a boldfaced, blanket warning against the use of “any materials, texts, phrases, ideas, and concepts that you have taken from any source outside your own head.” In the face of such conditioning, a student writer can’t help but develop a hint of paranoia: What is an editor if not a “source outside your own head?”

A beautiful thing, then, to step into the light of the real world and learn that collaboration is not a cardinal sin. Two heads, it turns out, can actually be better than one (though for obvious reasons, this wasn’t a cliché I thought to feature in my speech).

The goal of editing is to bring out the best in an author, and in a piece. An editor must prod at the material, searching for ways it can accomplish its goals more effectively, removing a comma here, changing a word there, playing with the “granola” (the textual topography and organization) — and in extreme cases, unsheathing a machete and hacking at the undergrowth. Ezra Pound sliced nearly as much out of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” as he left in, and it became a defining work in twentieth century literature. Is Eliot considered any less the author because of Pound’s assistance? Of course not.

But there is more to an editor’s job than mere editing, and this is where the LARB training was most valuable. When offering suggestions on a piece, it is important to keep the contributor - well, contributing. Writers, wouldn’t you know, tend to care about their words, and it is often no easy task to get one to change them. Seeing the editorial process firsthand, from assigning a deadline to finalizing a piece, I learned that a note of thanks, a kind word in the margin, or a phone call to the writer can often temper that galling red ink.

Although the junior-high kid inside me is still reluctant to admit my dad’s involvement in the writing of my speech (my friend’s brother will think I’m so  uncool now that he knows I didn’t come up with the joke), I don’t feel guilty anymore. The work was mine; all he did was help me refine it. He did all the things a good editor should do. Except for one: if a piece reads like it was written by a 14-year-old, a real editor knows to politely reject it.

James Simenc is a graduate of UCLA with degrees in English and Applied Math. He works at LARB in a variety of areas, including marketing, editing, and production. LARB’s internship program offers a flexible program for recent graduates to participate in every aspect of its production.  Please direct queries about internships or other volunteer opportunities to info@lareviewofbooks.org.