Sunday, January 17, 2010

Truth

Bob Cornwell interviews Peter Temple about his new book Truth, which will appear in the US in May (but you can get The Broken Shore right now...):
BC: You talked about your occasional disagreement with your Australian publisher over your paring down of the prose style. Was the occasional compromise required?

PT: If you trust an editor then you must take the person's concerns seriously. There are very few trustable editors, as there are very few good mechanics. I am at the mercy of two excellent practitioners, Michael Heyward and Penny Hueston [at Text Publishing, Temple’s Australian publishers]. They would have made good jockeys: strong in the upper body, in the habit of walking the track before the race to get a feel for the going. When told by one or both of them that the reader would never make sense of something unless I was more explicit, I sometimes gave way.
................................Reluctantly. They turned out to be right most of the time.
(Link courtesy of Sarah.)

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