The GrogMonkey

(See the bottom for a very important update.)

So, Moon City Review 2010 has been out for a few weeks now; I received my contributor’s copy yesterday. Yeah, I’m pretty excited and pleased. It’s the literary anthology put out by Moon City Press in conjunction with Missouri State University, and printed by the University of Arkansas Press. (I had a story published in last year’s, 2009 edition.) It’s available from UARK (linked above), the MSU bookstore, Border’s (at least in Springfield, MO for now), and Amazon and B&N (once they get either enough orders or their supply of copies).

I can’t help but enjoy the fact that my article in 2010 is the first item in the book, after the editor’s introduction. But, to be honest, that’s nothing to do with quality but rather because my essay introduces the theme of the anthology — a tribute to professor Dr. William J. Burling and his science fiction scholarship. Once I’ve read the whole anthology I’ll post a review; but so far, I’m pretty impressed! Aside from a couple of really lame poems I’ve read, the articles and stories I’ve sampled so far are entertaining and well-written. But until I get to the point that I can comment on the general content, I want to spend some time blathering about something stuck in my craw.

My essay, naturally, went through an editing process with an advisor of mine and the anthology’s editor. Fortunately, not much needed to be changed from my original drafts; some cleaning, tightening, but pretty much all of my content itself remained. My advisor suggested a couple of great improvements that I agree really helped out. But what bothers me is that my essay was changed between the final draft I approved and print! No matter how much I agree with and accept the editing process, that’s not kosher. Even if the change (which I’ll address in a moment) is warranted, changing it without informing the author, saying nothing and letting them discover it in the final product, just seems unethical. Even if one is going to make the change regardless, it just seems like a courtesy to e-mail the author and say, “Hey, just a note: We changed a couple of lines in your essay before sending it to print. Have a nice day.”

Anyway, as I re-read my original, and decided I understood why it was changed and agreed with it (at first), my only beef was that not being told issue. But then, as I read the rest of the article to see if anything else was changed, (nothing that I could tell), I discovered a reason why I now dislike the change itself and really wish I had an opportunity to defend the original.

Here’s the original introduction:

On my desk is a motley stack of spiral-bound notebooks. Some have loose pages sticking out of them; each is a different color, and all show various stages of wear. They are the record of courses I took with Dr. William J. Burling (1949-2009) at Missouri State University. Being a seasoned note-taker, I was as good as his amanuensis in class. Once, Dr. Burling called me a “colleague.” Though an offhand remark, he said it sincerely and later demonstrated its sincerity in both word and deed; it remains the greatest compliment I have ever received. So, what follows is a student’s recollections of a man, of his work, of his life as it was parsed and filtered to me, and of the life-experiences that influenced the kind of scholar he became.

Please be warned that Dr. Burling was a principled Marxist in every aspect of his life’s work. He professed Marxism, meaning that he lived it, and he was able to teach it because he lived it. To readers who dislike or mistrust the Marxist perspective, I can only advise you in Chaucerian manner to “Turne over the leef, and chese another tale.” Go straight to Kim Stanley Robinson if you prefer, whose politics are inscribed within his fiction in a manner, perhaps, more to your liking.

As for this story, I have been tasked to report on “what Dr. Burling said” and to give tribute to a man who based his life’s work on principles rather than on popularity. It is my hope, too, that this essay will serve as an introduction to Kim Stanley Robinson’s Blue Mars and to Dr. Burling’s use of that text.

Here is what it got changed to (the bold print is the changed text):

On my desk is a motley stack of spiral-bound notebooks. Some have loose pages sticking out of them; each is a different color, and all show various stages of wear. They are the record of courses I took with Dr. William J. Burling (1949-2009) at Missouri State University. Being a seasoned note-taker, I was as good as his amanuensis in class. Once, Dr. Burling called me a “colleague.” Though an offhand remark, he said it sincerely and later demonstrated its sincerity in both word and deed; it remains the greatest compliment I have ever received. So, what follows is a student’s recollections of a man, of his work, of his life as it was parsed and filtered to me, and of the life-experiences that influenced the kind of scholar he became.

Clearly, Burling was a principled Marxist in every aspect of his life’s work. He professed Marxism, meaning that he lived it, and he was able to teach it because he lived it. To readers who dislike or mistrust the Marxist approach to literature, I can only advise you to skim lightly other parts of this essay and go straight to Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Blue Mars excerpt shows (rather than tells) the issues behind the critical stance that Burling highlighted in his scholarship. As for this essay, I present “what Burling said” and give tribute to a man who based his life’s work on principles rather than on popularity.

I probably wouldn’t have rewritten it quite that way, but I can see how the Chaucer reference might have been seen as too confrontational in tone. That’s fine.

But then, I re-read my section some pages later that went like this:

With so much of his life and career invested in the study of literature, one of Burling’s most fervent predictions was that one day, in the not-too-distant future, literary study as we know it would come to an end. “Literature,” Burling would say, was a “power-play” term used by intellectuals to determine who had “cultural capital” and who was a “cultural peasant.” Burling would tease his class, asking who in the world (aside from teachers, whose job it is to dole out cultural capital) still reads Chaucer or Paradise Lost or (heresy of heresies!) Shakespeare for any reason other than to be able to say they’ve done so? Such reading would thus serve as a secret handshake to other intellectuals, declaring that you, too, are worthy to “come and go, / Talking of Michelangelo.”

And I remembered why I liked that introductory Chaucer reference: Part of Marxist criticism of capitalist culture and literary critique of postmodernism is an examination of contradictions inherent in them. In this parallelism of Chaucer use, I was exemplifying the contradiction Burling investigated by using Chaucer un-ironically in the very manner of exhibiting “cultural capital” that I would later decry as being a component of intellectual/artistic elitism. I was making a point that I figured the careful reader would catch and enjoy.

I dislike the change and just wish I had been given the chance to argue for the original, or given the chance to rewrite it so I could retain my intent while softening up the tone (assuming that’s why it was taken out). It’s likely I would even back down after at least being given the chance to state my case — I really have little ego when it comes to being edited. I mean, who the heck am I to argue (too much) with the advice of published professionals! But I ultimately just wish I was given the respect of being told they were making a change. Is this something Hugo Award winning editor, and my favorite editor since I was a 12-year-old reader of OMNI magazine in the early 80s, Ellen Datlow, would have done? Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, I’m published again, and that’s cool. So, now I have a story in M-Brane, one in MCR 2009, this essay in MCR 2010, some work in the upcoming Confederate Girlhoods: A Women’s History of Early Springfield, Missouri. I’m still waiting on a rejection from Tor.com on a story. That should come any time now, and then I can send that story off to a semi-pro ‘zine or something. Slowly but surely….

Update: Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. This is very embarrassing, but it’s incumbent upon me to right a wrong.

I was just looking for the most final of versions of the essay referred to above, so I could make an edit appropriate to a public reading next week… and I discovered the final proof the editor in question had e-mailed me.

Mea culpa in spades!!

Update on the update: I need to make this more clear than I did before: NOTHING WRONG HAPPENED! No one actuallydid anything unethical! I, in fact, was the one in the wrong for, A) Missing the e-mail attachment that had the final copy that did actually reflect what went to print! and, B) Because of that, accusing someone of doing something they didn’t do.

That said, and I want to make sure that’s well-understood, I do absolutely believe that if what I had described actually had happened, that would have been a breech in ethics I could not stomach. Even if an editor were to tell an author at the outset, “Hey, by the way, Stuff Happens sometimes, you know — it’s possible that we may need to change something between final approval and print,” then even that solves for the ethical question. Give the author knowledge that it may happen, and the opportunity to decide not to participate, and ethics isn’t a problem anymore, in my book. Again, it’s not about being changed, it’s about being informed of being changed that’s my issue.

But again, to be tediously redundant, no one involved in the editing process in this case did anything unethical or untoward. But, I wrote this post, and I think the subject-matter is important, so I’m deciding on these updates over striking the post altogether.

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