A few notes on Carver edits

Details regarding characters and customers are all thinned out, deleted, or in some cases rewritten from scratch. Particularly the "way" they said, reacted, or did something, which might have revealed a character trait-- empathetic, insensitive, selfish, etc.

Introspection edited into into an unpacked reaction--
Original: "Who's your fat friend? He's really a fatty. // I definitely resented her making such a remark."
Edited: "Who's your fat friend? He's a fatty. // Wow that's part of it. I think that's really part of it."

(This also effectively revamps the character of the speaker-- one who has a moral ground and sizes and it against less sensitive characters', one who has recognized her empathy for the fat customer. Changed to what? What was this remark "part of"? What is being recognized in this moment and what does that (half-) failure of naming it say about the speaker? She has trouble identifying what strikes her as significant.)


(Partly) reasoned responses to automatic responses--
-Facilitated by switching past tense to present, and consolidating sentences into single continuous (unconscious?) motions.

Original: "Enjoy your dinner, I said. I had the urge to linger around his table and I raised the lid of his sugar bowl and looked in."
Edited: "Enjoy your dinner I say. I raise the lid of his sugar bowl and looked in."

Why the speaker is drawn to the fat customer becomes more complex and unsettling with these edits. While the original text clearly designates empathy (though the reason for empathy is still wonderfully quixotic  even given the sexual relationship between the speaker and Rudy), the empathy in the edits is never designated by signalled as a strange kind of subconscious pull the speaker feels toward the fat man. The gravity of a body that knows and controls its boundaries, who fills itself willingly and with pleasure (unlike the speaker in the unsettling sex scene.)




I've taken several more notes I'll save for class if they seem appropriate to bring up. In general, I was shocked to see the difference between Carver's creative work and Lish's (which is most certainly creative work and not simple dry editing.) Maybe some will vary on their responses-- Carver wrote the plot, the characters, and the submerged conflict; therefore it is his authorial content. But the tonal style, the way of communicating, isn't Carver's enough for me to feel comfortable with this piece anymore. All of the despondency (part and parcel of the tension and the conflict) (the very style of minimalism, I believe) is Lish's contribution.

The prescriptive additions (does the term prescriptive even work here?) without a doubt overstep the editor/author line. I (and I'm sure other creative writers) would testify that the extent and frequency of new or rewritten sentences would never ever fly in a workshop setting or the like.