Bérubé: How many submissions did you receive for The Institution of Literature?
Williams: 385, not counting the nine essays you submitted, eight of which sucked, if you don’t mind my saying so.
Bérubé: Not at all. I totally respect your opinion when it comes to essays of mine that suck.
Williams: Well, they did. As did many of the 65 essays I accepted, 38 of which I had to rewrite.
Lyon: That sounds like a lot.
Williams: Yeah. I take editing seriously.
Bérubé: Well, how much rewriting did you do? We’re talking line edits, right?
Williams: Fuck no. I rewrote those motherfuckers from scratch.
Bérubé: Really? What did their authors say about that?
Williams: I didn’t ask them. Why?
Bérubé: Well, because most of the time, when editors make substantial changes to a manuscript, they run them by the authors, that’s why.
Williams: Fuck that. If I ran things by people, do you know long it would take me to produce an issue?
Bérubé: No, how long?
Williams: Too fucking long, that’s how long. There’s no way I have time to send editorial suggestions back to people who’ll only sit on them for four or five months and then get back to me with a bunch of bullshit complaints about what I’ve cut. Besides, do you think that guys like Leitch and Kumar give a shit either way? It’s not like they’re going to notice. Hell, I stuck three paragraphs from the Grundrisse into your first essay and you didn’t say a fucking word.
Bérubé: Wait, wait. That whole bit about how “the question of the relation between this production-determining distribution, and production, belongs evidently within production itself”? That wasn’t mine?
I don’t know if you can be in love with a valve, but I think I’m in love with The Valve
January 26, 2010, 1:43pm
