Seth,
Thanks for the kind words about the article.
>I wonder if you think Chandler would scrap so much of
what he'd gotten
>down in the first draft (everything he didn't
underline) partly
>because of the typewriter and that changes meant
re-typing up the
>whole page ...
>But at the same time, I think this method probably
was a great tool to
>use and it clearly helped him to produce some of the
tightest, best
>prose I can think of. Do you think he'd have done
anything close to
>this method today? How do you view revision? I think
with today's
>technology most of us probably rewrite far less than
writers in
>Chandler's day.
Those are some good questions and I'm not sure I really know
the answers. My sense, and it's only that, is that regardless
of technology, writers select their rewriting approaches
based on what seems to work for them, rather than what the
technology of the time best enables.
I think there was just something in Chandler's personality
that meant writing--including revisions--involved significant
(re)invention, not just
"tinkering." Besides the evidence from drafts of THE LONG
GOODBYE, I know that when he "cannibalized" his short stories
from BLACK MASK for his novels, he rewrote them
significantly.
Contrast that with somebody like Kerouac who wrote ON THE
ROAD in the early 50s (about the same time as THE LONG
GOODBYE) and typed the whole thing on a scroll of paper in a
single sitting (although I believe he actually drew from
scenes and notes recorded earlier in notebooks).
But, like I said, what do I know?
--MC
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