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Note: The meeting was recorded on
audiotape. Due to background noise, it was difficult to transcribe much of the
tape, but a general overview of the dialogue follows. Presenters Melinda
Mueller, author/poet of What
the Ice Gets: Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition, 1914-1916, winner of 2001
Washington State Book Award. Her poems have also been included in Pushcart Prize
and Best American Poetry anthologies. She teaches biology at Seattle Academy. Amy
Smith Bell, copyeditor of
What the Ice Gets, owner of ASB
Editorial Services, and member of the Editors Guild. Transcription
of the Meeting (Partial and Abridged) Melinda: For those of you who have not read (the book), it goes back
and forth between narrative chapters telling the basic stories of the Endurance
expedition, alternating with monologues by some of the men who were on the
expedition. Melinda
offers background on many of the members of the expedition and reads from the
book – a moving passage based on Frank Wild, second in command of the Endurance. (There is enthusiastic and
appreciative applause from Guild members.) Diane
initiates
a question-and-answer session. Question from Diane:
How much does the finished book reflect a collaboration between the three of
you? Not the poem, but the finished book, the way it looks? For
instance, it’s designed so beautifully. (Diane
suggests passing the book around the room.) There are so many different
sections because the narrative is broken up into sections depending on where
they are, and then within those sections, there are pieces from different people
on the boat. The first thing I thought was, “My God, how did they organize
this?” Was that (Melinda’s) idea? Did you bring it to the two of them (Jenny
and Amy)? And there are copious notes in the back as well. They sort their
sources in the back because Melinda used so many historical sources for this and
she cites them in the back. Amy says she had a crate of books to look at while
she was copyediting. Question from another: When
you were dealing with the notes, whose idea was that? It works so seamlessly.
How did you determine to do it that way? Melinda:
As far as the text goes and the going back and forth between the narratives and
the monologue, I did that piece. So when Jenny and Mary Jane, who was the editor
at the time for Van West, got the manuscript, as far as the basic text of the
manuscript, it was what you see. The
design and organization of the book is really this wonderful person here (Jenny)
who made it all look like it worked. And
then the fact that the thing is not just rife with errors of all sorts,
especially in those blasted notes, that is (Amy’s work). Jenny:
The contents and the way I interpreted Melinda’s organization of this was
different than what Melinda had in mind. For instance, when you look at the
book, take a look at the contents. Melinda
and Jenny briefly discuss the organization of the book and how they worked
together to create the table of contents. Melinda:
It’s as if each man comments on that narrative as part of the narrative. In my
head, I had it much more separate, but as soon as (Jenny) did that, I really
liked it. Question:
So did you actually have the diary entries arranged in order somehow by person
or by date? Melinda:
Yes. What I did as far as research for the book was that I had this pile of
books on my desk with some copies of manuscripts that I got from libraries and
some unpublished material. Melinda
presents a copy of what the book looked like three years ago; it is written in
longhand in a well-worn notebook. She tells more about her research and writing
of the book, her passion for the story, and her interest in exploration. Question: Did (the characters) start talking to you by themselves? Did
you start feeling like there was “Wild” in your head saying, “Write this
down”? Melinda:
Yes.…The first monologue that I had to tackle was Shackleton. What could be
more intimidating? He was difficult because he’s written so much. How am I
going to do something original and yet still be Shackleton? I was having a
terrible time with this.… Finally, I looked at this glorious Alaskan sunset
and said, “Sir Ernest, whatever you want to say, you’re going to have to
tell me because I’m not getting anywhere.” And then there was a little
pause. And then in my head I heard a little voice saying, “A bit of a humbug,
I know people think so.” And there he was. I
don’t feel that in the supernatural sense, but I do think that if you’re
going to write about a character, you have to give up writing about the
character in a sense of yourself, and you really have to believe that you can
ask them what they want to say.… Jenny:
Along those lines, designing books is a similar experience in the sense that
it’s my job to really ask the text what is necessary and what is not.… I
found in reading it that I was so much in the moment in the story that it felt
necessary to me to evoke something of the time, the World War I era. I went to
the rare book room at the University of Washington and looked at a few (books of
the time), and tried to get that feel in my sensibility. As I was working with
some of those ideas and typefaces, I began to see how the writing is most
served. The
finished book needs to channel the work as well as possible, as purely and
without obstacle as best as I can. Melinda:
Funny paradox, you’re the artist who’s creating the thing and yet you have
to get out of the way. Question:
Was this book any more difficult than other poetry books you’ve written? Jenny:
It took a number of trials to get these notes to look clean and easy to find and
read easily. Amy was involved in that. There were so many memos…. it’s
something I really appreciate. Question:
Whose idea was it to put “{a poem}” on the cover in brackets? Jenny:
That was me. There are so many books on Shackleton
out there. It’s also not evident from the cover (that it’s a poem). Melinda: I always thought of it as a warning label. (laughs
and much continued joking about poems) Question: Amy, what were the specific challenges of
copyediting? Amy:
There was another copyeditor that Jenny worked with
on the text, the poem. My primary responsibility was the notes, which was really
great for me. I don’t know if Jenny or Melinda knew it, but my background is
in historical editing, so this was not that scary to me. Jenny
brought this box over to my house that had (laughs) about 30 hardcovers and a
couple 300-page xeroxes of handwritten memoirs. It was so amazing to have all
the sources in front of me. My primary responsibility was to make sure that the
quotations – the scholarship that it took to get all this information together
was quite heavy – my responsibility was to make sure that the quotations or
the passages that were paraphrased in the poem were accurate. I read the
passages in all of the books and all of the sources word for word to make sure
everything was accurate, because someone’s going to care that they’re
absolutely accurate. Amy
presents the draft with all of the editing notes between herself, David (the
other copyeditor), Jenny, Mary Jane, and Melinda. So,
we have these notes. This is about four rounds, four passes. This is simply the
source notes – the list of the works in the book. There was a lot to work out.
Melinda put so much work into documenting all of this. Everything just needed to
be absolutely perfect. The
poem itself, I really didn’t have much to do with the language at all other
than cosmetic issues. Every word is so deliberate that, as a copyeditor working
on someone’s poetry, it’s so hands-off. It’s so different from editing
something else…anything that I queried was probably just extreme caution, for
example, (punctuation consistency) or spellings of names, name
consistency…everything is really cautiously queried. Jenny:
Part of what Amy was dealing with is that these men
were from all over the UK and New Zealand. They punctuate differently and spell
differently in those different places. There was a need to look for where to be
consistent and yet where to be inconsistent so as to be correct (according to
the sources), which Melinda had made the effort to seek out. Melinda:
So in the narrative sections, the spellings are
American standard. And in the men’s monologues, they’re British standard. So
when I use the word “color” in the narrative, it’s “c-o-l-o-r,” but
when of these men uses the word “color,” if he were to spell it at all,
it’s “c-o-l-o-u-r.” That was one of the challenges that I gave to both
David and Amy. They had to have the sensibility to know what I was doing and why
it was inconsistent. Amy
said that she didn’t touch the poetry except here and there. But I want to say
how important the work she did on the notes was for me. For one thing, I was a
complete amateur – a poet, for crying out loud – I don’t usually have
footnotes for a poem. But it was very important to me that this thing be
historically accurate and that it be true to what the men had said and what they
had written. So I wanted those notes to be just right, but I didn’t know how
to make them just right. The amount of work that Amy had to do to take what I
found and make it right was huge, and I really feel that the notes in some sense
are as important as the poem. For the notes to be just right is just as
important to me. I was hugely appreciative. To
give another example, in one of the men’s monologues I used the word
“landslide.” David wrote back a note saying, “This is not a British usage.
The British don’t use the word ‘landslide.’ They use ‘landslip.’”
And I hated the word “landslip” in that spot in the poem. It sounded really
bad because there were some other short “I” sounds. It was going to sound
jingley, like a nursery rhyme. So I had to rewrite that line with a word that
would still suit but that wasn’t “landslide,” because Worsley would not
have used the word “landslide.” And I would never have caught that. That
was the level of care that David and Amy took with this book. I can’t tell you
how grateful I am. You people, you’re great! The
question-and-answer session and dialogue among the guests continued along these
lines. Amy shared some of her past experience on editing works of academic
scholarship. She treated this project as such. Conclusion The
dialogue ended with another reading from the book by Melinda Mueller, this time
with an accent! The meeting concluded with socializing among the group, members
of the Guild purchasing Ms. Mueller’s book from Jenny Van West, and many book
signings by Ms. Mueller. — Transcription by Joan Pliego
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