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Double Drecker BluesDecember 09, 2007 Copyediting is hack work. Copyediting is morally and spiritually perilous. Yeah, the former sounds boring and the latter sounds sort of exciting, but the two aren't anywhere close to mutually exclusive. I know this because for the last month of so my life has been dominated by two interminable copyediting jobs, both of which I loathe. Over the years I've been lucky: the production editors (PEs) I work with usually send me the kind of stuff I'm good at, which tends to be the stuff that gives me something back, like it's interesting and informative and I'm pleased to do my bit in making it even better. Not to say I haven't worked on some borderline dreck, but the dreck is infrequent and and generally out of here in three weeks or less. Two concurrent big drecks is unusual. Not to mention that earlier this fall I copyedited a smaller dreck: the acquiring editor apparently didn't notice that the book was sloppily written, poorly organized, and riddled with shallow and barely supported arguments. More likely the acquiring editor didn't care that the book was sloppily written, etc., because the subject was electoral politics, the author is a "political consultant," and in case anyone hasn't noticed (yawn) election year is fast approaching in the U.S. of A. I skimmed the first 15 pages or so and then did what I usually do when a misshapen and barely breathing manuscript lands in my lap: gingerly made inquiries to establish that the PE knew it was dreck and, more to the point, it was still going to be dreck when I got done with it. The answer was "This book's on a tight schedule and you're getting the rush rate" -- which loosely translated means "Yes." That job's major virtue was its length: barely 300 pages, with generous margins. The tight schedule was also a blessing -- I turned the ms. around in barely two weeks -- and when my ordeal was over and I wrote up my invoice the rush rate looked pretty good too. The dreck currently in residence and the dreck whose last installment I overnighted to New York on Thursday lack this virtue. The former is well over 700 pages, with extensive endnotes. The latter lacked endnotes but it was 2,000 pages long. Length itself is not a bad thing: I started off the year copyediting the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace; it was about 2,300 pages long, with endnotes and footnotes and long passages in French, and I was sorry when it left. But my dreck was not Tolstoy. The major virtue of my dear departed dreck was that of those 2,000 pages I only had to copyedit 1,200. Another copyeditor started the job but had to bail because she was leaving for three months in Southeast Asia. If only my own passport had been up-to-date . . . Short dreck makes me surly, but when it's gone, it's gone. Long dreck seeps into the carpet, the curtains, and the pores of my body and pretty soon I'm wondering if life is worth living. Seen from above, copyediting is one small station on the book assembly line. The smart worker doesn't get emotionally involved with each widget that comes down the line, and the more she needs the job, the less she can afford to think about the finished product: whether it's shoddily made or outright defective or maybe it's just useless frou-frou. Seen from above -- or wherever it is that the accountants, managers, and investors reside -- books are widgets. A good widget is one that makes a bundle. If quality contributes to bundle-making, then by all means let's budget for quality. If it doesn't, well, hey, that's a good place to start cutting costs. From the copyeditorial station, books are not widgets. Books are more like dance partners -- you know you'll be leaving the party in separate cars, but while the music is playing a certain intimacy is required. When you're in sync, the word that pops into your head is the one the author would have used if he hadn't been so devoted to his thesaurus; by the time you get to the end of a snarly sentence, you know what the author was trying to say and how to say it in a way that makes the author think, "Isn't that what I said?" When you're not, you focus entirely on keeping the klutz from overturning the punchbowl or crashing you into a wall. When the klutz is determined to overturn the punchbowl (chances are he's not trying to crash you into the wall; he doesn't even know you're there), your objective is to make sure the punch hits him, not you. Fortunately this is not hard: it'll be his name on the cover and, if necessary, a little fancy footwork will keep your name out of the acknowledgments. Page 2001 or page 754 can't come too soon, but in copyediting there are no shortcuts. You may fantasize, or even pray for, divine intervention -- maybe someone at the press will realize there's bullshit on the dance floor and escort the perp to the Augean stables? -- but deep down you know it's gonna be a long slog and you'll get through this jungle the way you got through its predecessors: one page at a time. Put Pete Seeger's "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy" on the boom box and hope that the big fool who keeps telling you to "push on" doesn't come within range of your keyboard. Except that the big fool isn't in uniform. She's in your head, telling you that no hours are wasted if you're getting paid for them. She's wrong.
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