I’ve been meaning to put this up for a while, it’s from Adam Gopnik’s article on abridging classic novels in the Sept. 22 New Yorker. I truly do not work at the speed of blog. Anyway, here it is, first on Moby Dick:

“The subtraction does not turn good work into hackwork; it turns a hysterical, half-mad masterpiece into a sound sane book.”

And in conclusion:

“The real lesson of the compact editions is not that vandals shouldn’t be let loose on masterpieces but that masterpieces are inherently a little loony. They run on the engine of their own accumulated habits and weirdnesses [is weirdnesses a legitimate-enough word for the New Yorker? really? awesome!] and self-indulgent excesses. They have to, since originality is, necessarily, something still strange to us, rather than something that we already know about and approve. What makes writing matter is not a story, clearly told, but a voice, however odd or ordinary, and a point of view, however strange or sentimental. Books can be snipped at, and made less melodically muddled, but they lose their overtones, their bass notes, their chesty resonance — the same thing that happens, come to think of it, to human castrati.”

I’ve left in the weird analogy to castrati at the end, because I think it’s part of his point - a creative artist has to be fearless enough to make really really weird, rather unpleasant analogies. (more…)