An editor does not add to a book. At best he serves as a handmaiden to an author. [Editors should never] get to feeling important about themselves, because an editor at most releases energy. He creates nothing. A writer's best work comes entirely from himself. If you [an editor] have a Mark Twain, don't try to make him into a Shakespeare or make a Shakespeare into a Mark Twain. Because in the end an editor can get only as much out of an author as the author has in him.
Maxwell Perkins as quoted in A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, 1978
Maxwell Perkins as quoted in A. Scott Berg's Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, 1978
No comments:
Post a Comment