{"id":18218,"date":"2010-04-22T22:19:33","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T02:19:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=18218"},"modified":"2015-01-26T20:20:52","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T01:20:52","slug":"and-what-is-wrong-with-a-second-rate-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2010\/04\/22\/and-what-is-wrong-with-a-second-rate-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"And What is Wrong With a Second-Rate Writer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In addition to the Ray Bradbury interview<\/a> I already told you about, the Spring 2010 issue of The Paris Review<\/i><\/a> also contains an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction writer John McPhee.<\/p>\n

Over the course of his lengthy interview, McPhee, a longtime writer for The New Yorker<\/i>, offered up two anecdotes I particularly liked.<\/p>\n

First came one that shines a spotlight on the choices those of us who are both writers and editors must make:<\/p>\n

Bingham had been a writer-reporter at The Reporter<\/i> magazine. So he comes to work at The New Yorker<\/i>, to be a fact editor. Within the first two years there, he goes out to lunch with his old high-school friend Gore Vidal. And Gore says, What are you doing as an editor, Bobby? What happened to Bob Bingham the writer? And Bingham says, Well, I decided that I would rather be a first-rate editor than a second-rate writer. And Gore Vidal draws himself up and says, And what is wrong with a second-rate writer?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not at all a retort I would have expected out of Gore Vidal, whose ego seemed such that I’m surprised the phrase “second-rate” was in his vocabulary.<\/p>\n

Then came an interesting metaphor relating to style over content, and polish over substance:<\/p>\n

I got my thirty thousand words done, and then I finished the thing over Christmas. It has a really good structure and was technically fine. But it had no life in it at all. One person wrote a note on it that said, You demonstrated you know how to saddle a horse. Now go find the horse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You’ll have to excuse me now. I think I’d better go find a horse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to the Ray Bradbury interview I already told you about, the Spring 2010 issue of The Paris Review also contains an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning non-fiction writer John McPhee. Over the course of his lengthy interview, McPhee, a longtime writer for The New Yorker, offered up two anecdotes I particularly liked. First came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[123],"class_list":["post-18218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-paris-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18219,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18218\/revisions\/18219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}