Thursday, October 20, 2011

Some can get away with it

A few posts ago, Larry Cheek provided a list of what to do (or not) when dealing with editors. He said, "An essay, being much about your voice, your experience, and your interpretation, is basically the writer's property."

Apparently, that's what David Foster Wallace believed too, because in 1998, along with an essay on Kafka, he sent a letter to the editors of Harper's Magazine, basically demanding that they keep their red pens in their pockets.

If they touched his essay, he promised to "find a way to harm you or cause you suffering* if you fuck with the mechanics of this piece."

I don't know that this is in keeping with Cheek's other recommendation to "cultivate a personal relationship."

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