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Men Running on Tanks and the Truth about Book Editors

2011-06-06 · John · watch on YouTube · Books & writing · reflection essay

Lower-confidence wave

2011 videos did not pass the QA gate (17 %); their analysis is shown but less reliable.

After reporting on the Indianapolis Museum of Art's US Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, John argues that editors exist neither to fix grammar nor to censor: the real work is the editorial letter, and writers may not be more important than editors.

What is said

00:00:06 — Venice Biennale: the IMA's US Pavilion by Allora & Calzadilla, a party with Michael Stipe, Indianapolis pride

  • ★★ John was in Venice because the Indianapolis Museum of Art, where the Yeti is a curator, commissioned the 2011 American Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. — 00:00:06 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ John went to a party with R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, writer of 'Stand', to which John and Hank choreographed a dance in 1989 that their dad videotaped and lost. (playful) — 00:00:19
  • ★★ John calls Allora & Calzadilla's pavilion (overturned tanks, Olympic athletes, an ATM that is also a pipe organ) a total success and is proud of everyone at the IMA. — 00:00:31 · Indianapolis
  • ★★ John says this is the first time the Venice Biennale commission went to a museum not on either coast or the Art Institute of Chicago. — 00:00:46

00:01:09 — The edited manuscript of his new book arrives: stormtrooper spellings and every day being Friday

  • ★★ The manuscript of John's new book arrived from New York with his editor and publisher Julie Strauss-Gabel's comments on the pages. — 00:01:09
  • ★★ After more than a year of revising the book together, John and Julie have reached the fun stage of notes on the manuscript, like how to spell 'stormtrooper'. — 00:01:18
  • ★ John admits a weakness: in his drafts every day is Friday, and Julie's notes tease him for not tracking which day it should be. (playful) — 00:01:28

00:01:47 — The truth about editors: the editorial letter, not grammar or censorship; examples from his books; writers may not matter more than editors

  • ★★★ John says the public sees editors as fixing details, but the heart of editing comes earlier: he sends Julie a draft and she sends an editorial letter. — 00:01:47
  • ★★ John reads from Julie's editorial letter on his new book, which raises Augustus's philosophy against Hazel's, the nobility of sacrifice versus illness, and what constitutes martyrdom. — 00:02:04 · Hazel Grace Lancaster
  • ★ John tells Julie he won't change his spelling of stormtroopers unless George Lucas tells him it's two words, but concedes she is right about everything else. (playful) — 00:02:21
  • ★★★ John says the assumption that editors exist mainly to fix grammar is wrong; he could just read the Chicago style manual for that. — 00:02:37
  • ★★★ John says it is also wrong to think editors exist mainly to censor your work or make it worse. — 00:02:44
  • ★★ Without Julie, John says, Paper Towns would be largely a boring history of the US Postal Service instead of being about Whitman's Song of Myself. — 00:02:54 · Paper Towns, Walt Whitman
  • ★★ Without Julie, An Abundance of Katherines would have had a 75-page guide to tanning a roadkill raccoon's hide instead of Colin and Hassan hunting feral hogs; in 2005 he was into hide tanning. — 00:03:02 · An Abundance of Katherines
  • ★★ John says that without Julie and, before her, his mentor and first editor Ilene Cooper, nothing anyone likes about Looking for Alaska would be in it. — 00:03:19 · Looking for Alaska
  • ★★★ John concludes that, much as he'd like to think writers matter more than editors, they may not. (hedged) — 00:03:27
  • ★★ John notes that The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises were edited by the same man. — 00:03:29 · The Great Gatsby

Humor (significant)

  • John tries demonyms for Indianapolis and stages a mini dialogue to try out the best one. — 00:01:06 > «Hey, where are you from? Oh me? I'm Indianapolicious.»
  • Julie asks whether John even tries to figure out which day it should be in his book. — 00:01:45 > «No! I’m not trying! That’s your job.»
  • Conceding Julie's edits, John nods to the 'Friday' song. — 00:02:33 > «no matter how happy it would make a private person, I agree with you that every day should not be Friday»
  • Right after the bit about every day being Friday, John signs off with 'I'll see you on Friday' without meaning to. — 00:03:43 > «it’s like I have calendrically specific dementia»

Threads in this video

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