Editing Is Learning

At a recent gathering of colleagues in a restaurant perched among the precarious hills of San Francisco, the conversation tipped momentarily toward editing. Some of those seated at the table had been contributors to Leviathan, the peer-reviewed journal of Melville studies I edit. And as I carefully spun the lazy Susan of Chinese dishes to my left, I disclosed what I had heard from another contributor?not present and never mind the name, of course?whose work was soon to appear in the journal. As with all contributions, the essay had been a blind submission, accepted by readers on our editorial board and revised according to their advice. In a final round of revision, I had given the essay a vigorous copyediting, responding often line by line to issues regarding fact, mechanics, and style but also argumentation. After his article had gone through several rounds of such back-and-forthing and been sent off to the compositor, the con tributor wrote to me, with tremendous appreciation, to say that he had never gotten as much feedback from his dissertation director as he had from me. Across the table, another contributor, whose experience moving his essay through the Leviathan matrix had been similar, added his own anecdote. He had made exactly the same comparison between dissertation director and "Editor Bryant" but in this case to a fellow graduate student. And as he spun the sizzling beef back in my direction, he reported his friend's riposte: "Well, yeah, it's his journal."