May 18, 2005

Homer's Iliad, based on Homer's The Iliad

Christopher Hitchens on writing and being edited:

I used the word “Promethean” and the [magazine editors] said, “Take that out because people won't know what Promethean means.” I said, “Maybe they won't. I'll cut it out if you give me another synonym for it. You give the words that would stand in for it and I'll change it.” “There doesn't seem to be one,” they said. “No, there isn't, is there?” You either know what “Promethean” means or you don't. If you do, it saves you about 50 words. And if you don't, then you can look it up...

This is an excerpt from an apparently much longer interview from the print version of Stop Smiling. Lots of good stuff there, including a riff on clunky editorial interpolations intended to gloss ostensibly unfamiliar names or terms; and a touching anecdote about Solzhenitsyn being too shy to show up for an appointment with Nabokov.

Nabokov (1899-1977), the Russian-born novelist best-known for his controversial English-language novel Lolita, which has been made into two successful films including one starring British actor Jeremy Irons (of Brideshead Revisited and Lion King fame), really was a bastard.

(via MobyLives.)

Posted by Dr. Frank at May 18, 2005 03:24 PM | TrackBack