COLLABORATION

COLLABORATION

Are we worried when we know that Shakespeare’s plays are the result in part of collaboration with other writers? Does the public know the extent to which an editor works in partnership with the writer to bring the text to its publishable state? Should we be concerned that Carver’s short stories, the ones that made his name, were the result of intense and defining cutting by his editor – to the extent that there is now discussion about whose stories they really are?

There’s an interesting discussion of Carver here: http://www.slate.com/id/2235571/

Carver’s editor, Lish, did more than pick up on errors of expression. He sliced and diced through the stories, changing the tone and the values of some stories, paring away Carver’s writing to get to something sparse and tight. Lish openly takes credit for the stories that made Carver’s reputation. Should we be anxious about this?

Many editors have intense relationships with their writers, and can contribute a great deal to a writer’s success. This is not new. So why is Lish’s editing attracting so much attention?

I have worked on a couple of collaborative projects, one in particular that grew into something amazing and complex. The writer I worked with described it as being greater than the sum of its parts. We responded to each other’s writing in an intense and concentrated way and created a work that was vibrant and exciting. At the end of the day, whose work is it?

Of course, (and sadly) issues of ownership are in part to do with money and business. This collaborative writer, having fallen out with me, has forbidden me to use any part of her creation in a work of my own (making it impossible to use much of what was written by me). I have given this writer full permission to use my created character and my ideas, but not my actual words. Why this difference?

In the discussion of Carver, there is concern that a story can be the product of two brains rather than one. The critics find that a difficult thing to deal with. But what matters, surely, is the story itself and it has more value than the identification of who wrote what in the story. I find it interesting the relationship between Carver and Lish and the ‘dance’ they did together. I also find it interesting that Lish’s contribution helped not only establish Carver’s reputation but also influenced a whole generation of American writers and how they wrote.

Collaboration was the way of art and artists in the past and nobody had any problem with this. Not until Romanticism and the cult of the artist as venerated individual. Maybe it is time to rethink this matter. In our celebrity-driven society, maybe it is time for some sort of deconstruction…and that is why I think this discussion of Carver is interesting and relevant. I can enjoy both the pure Carver versions and the Lish-influenced versions, and there is something valuable to learn from them both; but I prefer what Lish has done with Carver’s work. There is a general consensus that the collaborative works are better, where Lish has worked with Carver on tightening and paring back and shaping the works beyond their original conception. It is time to re-examine the whole notion of collaboration as a way of producing the best in art… and when we do this we will have to reinvestigate the whole subject of ownership of ideas and intellectual property… and there, for those who ascribe to the cult of the author (wanting to see themselves as venerated), is the rub.

Thoughts?