I know a young woman--a very handsome young woman she is, too. (I have a decided penchant for handsome young women.) But that is beside the point. As I was about to say (when a pleasant but an extraneous idea interrupted me): this young woman the other day took her young husband by the hand and conducted him to the offices of a publisher. Here she mounted him upon a chair (very much, I fancy, as though the child were about to have his hair cut), and she said to the barber--I mean she said to the editor, with whom she had some acquaintance--she said: "This is my husband. He is just out of the army. I have brought him in to have his head shingled"---- No, no! that isn't what she said; I am getting my wires crossed. She said, "I have brought him in to get him a position here."
Said the editor, "What would your son, I mean your husband, like to do?"
"I want him," replied the young woman, "to be an editor."
"Has he ever been an editor?" inquired the editor kindly, as he admired the shape of the young woman's nose.
"No," she answered, stroking his hand (the hand, that is, of her husband), "why, no."
"What has been his experience?" asked the editor, as the thought of all the hard work he had to do in the next hour and a half wrestled in his mind with his pleasure in the young woman's voice.
"Why," she said, "before he went into the army I don't know that he had any particular experience. He was just out of college, you see."
"Oh!" said the editor, "I see. And why," he asked musingly, "do you want him to be an editor?"
"Well, I don't know exactly," answered the young woman, "I just thought it would be rather nice to have him be an editor."
Even so. Day after day, come into publishing houses young persons, and indeed people of all ages, who have a hunch (and apparently nothing more to go by) that they would like to be "an editor." Also, in every other mail, come letters from aspirants in distant parts setting forth (what they deem) their qualifications.
Now and then someone makes such an application who has been an editor before. It (editing) is probably the only business he knows, and perhaps it is too late (or his spirit is too broken) for him to take up another. So, disillusioned but not misguided, for him there is charity of thought. But the fledglings are in the great majority. Their qualifications (is it necessary to say?) usually are: a university degree, perhaps some association with a college paper, maybe the credit of an article (or a poem) or two published in a minor magazine issued for the Intelligentzia, a very sincere attachment to books of superior worth, a disdain for empyreal literature, openness to a modest salary (to begin), and an abysmal lack of any comprehension of the business of publishing books or magazines. Every little bit turns up one who (it develops) wants a job on the side, as it were, merely to sustain the real business of life, which (maybe) is taking a graduate course at Columbia, or some such thing. And in many cases (it is obvious) the real business of life is writing poetry, or fiction, though to this end a job must be endured--doubtless temporarily.
Now why anyone should want to be an editor beats me. No, I retract. 'Tis quite plain. Ignorance, ma'am, sheer ignorance of the calamity. I know an editor; in fact, I know six. One, indeed, is a brother of mine, another is a cousin, a third an uncle. Before they became editors they used to read books and magazines--for pleasure, sometimes; or again for profit to their souls. Now they do neither. They read only professionally. They can't read anything unless they have to, in the way of business. Before they became editors they led intellectual lives; spiritually they grew continually. They used to be perfectly delighted, excited (as people should be), by hearing of books, of authors, new to them. They were fascinated by the journey of their minds. They might have gone on thus through their years, interested in themselves, interesting to others, pillars of society. They might even, for all their thoughts (then) were inspirations, have written delightful things themselves. In fact, two of them did. But they became editors.
Now they, subconsciously, count the words of manuscripts. They cut articles, like cloth, to fit. They gauge the "rate" to be paid for this, for that. They cannot take an interest in this because something like it has just appeared somewhere else. They can't take an interest in that because it is not like something that has just made a hit somewhere else. Now when they have something to read they say (like Plim, Bimm, whatever his name was, the veteran hack novelist in the early Barrie story), "I'll begin the damn thing at eight o'clock."
Worst of all, they have lost, totally lost, that shield against adversity, that great joy in days of prosperity, that deep satisfaction of life. I mean, of course, the relish of
buying books. Everyone knows that to revel in the possession of a book one must covet it before one feels one should buy it. Everyone knows that to love a book jealously one must have made some sacrifice to obtain it. That a library which supplies unending strength to the spirit means in all its parts, a little here, a little there, some self-denial of other things.
But editors, poor fish, are impotent in this high and lasting pleasure; they have lost the power to spend their money for books. They expect books to be given to them free by the publishers. Their money goes for Kelley pool and cigars.
[The end]
Robert Cortes Holliday's essay: I Know An Editor