Issue Details: First known date: 2024... 2024 Anticipating Enchantment : The Myth of Editorial Perfection and the Legend of the Solo Author
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Telling a stranger that you are a book editor normally results in one of two responses. Either you’ll be told that editing has deteriorated – whether in the past five or fifty years depends on your interlocutor. Or the charge is that editors intervene too much, their contribution a sort of con job perpetrated on unsuspecting readers. Both responses are characterised as a symptom of the evils of capitalism: either there is no money for proper editing anymore, or books are being smooshed into more marketable boxes. Some claim that there is no proper editing because they’ve found typos or misused words and phrases in contemporary books. Others hold that editorial interventions are extreme and endanger the concept of authorship.' (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Griffith Review Past Perfect no. 83 February 2024 27445060 2024 periodical issue

    'The past, famously, is a foreign country – but in the twenty-first century, it’s one in which we increasingly seek solace. What fuels this love affair with recycling our history? What periods do we choose to romanticise, and how do our rose-tinted glasses occlude reality? Is all this nostalgia signifying – as the late Mark Fisher opined – the disappearance of the future? 

    'In this edition, we explore the connection between loneliness, nostalgia and Big Tech and the ways nostalgia has been weaponised for political gain. 

    'We revisit the heyday of advertising in the ’90s and investigate two long-standing editorial myths: have editors got worse? Do they infringe too much on the work of authors? 

    'We talk with Melissa Lukashenko about the important role of historical fiction in recovering First Nations knowledges, experiences and stories, and learn from Witi Ihimaera about the ingenuity, mischief and gift for reinvention at the heart of Indigenous storytelling. 

    'Griffith Review 83: Past Perfect surveys our need to idealise, sensationalise and glamorise – and asks what the circular nature of our obsessions says about our present cultural moment.' (Publication summary) 

    2024
    pg. 134-141
Last amended 2 Feb 2024 08:14:55
134-141 Anticipating Enchantment : The Myth of Editorial Perfection and the Legend of the Solo Authorsmall AustLit logo Griffith Review
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