As I noted a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t actually read — nor do I feel any real compulsion to read — Anne Rice’s latest book, but I was struck by the following comments she made to The New York Times today:
“People who find fault and problems with my books tend to say, ‘She needs an editor,'” Ms. Rice said. “When a person writes with such care and goes over and over a manuscript and wants every word to be perfect, it’s very frustrating.”
She added: “When you take home a CD of Pavarotti or Marilyn Horne, you don’t want to hear another voice blended in. I feel the same way about Hemingway. If I read it, I don’t want to read a new edited version.”
What struck me was not the fact that I’d never in my life before heard of Marilyn Horne. (Ms. Rice and I must not share the same musical tastes.) It was the fact that, unless I’m very much mistaken, recording artists like Horne and Pavarotti have record producers and other collaborators who work on their albums. And Ernest Hemingway had an editor.
After all, it isn’t always enough to want every word to be perfect. As Aldous Huxley once said, “A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.”