a visit to the post office

[calimac]

Yesterday I went to the post office, carrying a big box with a large book typescript inside, and mailed it to a university press. I like the automated postal machines that have been appearing in lobbies in recent years, but the new postal regulations that consider physical size as well as weight are puzzling to me, and until I figure them out, I'm going to the counter with all my boxes and large envelopes, just to be safe.

The book typescript wasn't mine. The university press had sent it to me in the same box, and I was mailing it back now that I was done with it. Someone else had written it and submitted it to them, and their process of deciding whether to accept it involved gathering the opinions of outside readers. That's where I came in.

This is the fourth time an academic press (not always the same one) has consulted me as a Tolkien expert to review a manuscript. One of the previous three books was excellent, and was duly published. One was terrible, and was rejected. One had a good idea buried inside, but desperately needed to be seriously rethought. It was eventually published in somewhat improved form.

The book I just returned, and reported on separately by e-mail, is a highly technical study of Tolkien's posthumous work. What I thought of it, and which of the previous three it most resembled, will remain in my unsigned report. I will just say that I like doing this kind of work. And they pay me for it too.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

It is nice to get paid to do what one enjoys doing. I spent all too brief a time being paid to operate a non-profit corporation and would have organized their annual convention if they hadn't been in such parlous condition when they hired me that all I could do was organize a somewhat orderly shutdown.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Do you evaluate the scholarship and the quality of the writing, or just the scholarship? If you evaluate the quality of the writing, hooray. Too often I get a book to copyedit that has been vetted in terms of content, but that makes me wail after a few pages, "Did anyone actually read this thing?"

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Do I evaluate the writing? I certainly do. Here is a very brief first impression of a published multi-author encyclopedia on Tolkien - hardly on the level, let alone the length, of one of my paid reports - where I discuss organization, presentation, and approach, as well as the writing on the "what does this sentence mean?" level, and repeatedly ask the question, "Did anybody edit this book?"

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Bless you.

While copy editors are as subject as any group to Sturgeon's Law, what appears to be the copy editor's fault isn't always. If an author has enough clout with the publisher (or the sponsoring editor is a weenie), some appalling stets may get through.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

This isn't exclusive to you, but I'm rather taken with the phrase "posthumous work."

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Standard abbreviation for "posthumously published work," same as "posthumous child" is a standard ... but you know all that.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Sure; I'm just easily amused.

[magscanner.livejournal.com]

I am currently parsing "posthumously published child."