The impulse to revise

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Things were a little intense at our house the last week or so, since I was reading proofs, and not just any old proofs, but those of my own upcoming novel (This Hidden Thing). Proofs mean the work that’s been sitting in computer files and doublespaced on 81/2 X 11 sheets of paper, has landed on designed pages for a book. Proofs mean it’s close to ready for press. Just this last chance to check things over. A wee bit of room for changes, but not much. Not much at all. The cover design is close to finished too. It’s all rather exciting and scary.

On the page in its as-good-as-permanent form, the work can look strange and unfamiliar. In spite of all the times one’s gone through the manuscript, one suddenly sees what there’s probably too much of and maybe too little of as well. I’m comforted, however, in reading the letters of Flannery O’Connor, to find that a writer as good as she was had experiences along the same line. In a letter Oct. 6, 1959 she wrote a friend:

The proofs [of The Violent Bear It Away] came… and seeing the thing in print very nearly made me sick. It all seemed awful to me. There seemed too much to correct to make correcting anything feasible. I did what I could or could stand to and sent them back…

Well, I’m not trying to scare anyone off my book by confessing and quoting that — I wouldn’t be a writer if I didn’t want readers, and I hope it’s not a surprise to hear that even at this stage of a book anxieties and vulnerabilities of all kinds manifest themselves. This is probably true for anyone who has to let go of what they’ve done, into the public. But O’Connor also said she thought the first and last sentence of the book were “mighty fine sentences” and that she had cheered herself “meditating on them.” After awhile I relaxed with the proofing process too and decided I would be okay with what was there — except for those changes I’ve pleaded the forbearance of my editor and the publishing team to make, of course! 

But there’s just something unfailing about the impulse to revise, and to revise again. I had to chuckle over the note Flannery O’Connor sent editor Catharine Carver:

I’ve rewritten the last pages so I’ll enclose them as I think they’re an improvement. When the grim reaper comes to get me, he’ll have to give me a few extra hours to revise my last words. No end to this.

I wouldn’t mind some warning from the Reaper too, for the same reason!

Oh, and this revision after the post went up (it’s the great thing about blogging): please forgive the shameless self-promotion!

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NOTE: The launch date of This Hidden Thing (CMU Press) has been set for May 19 at McNally’s in Winnipeg.

Gene Stoltzfus: celebration of life service

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Last Thursday, I attended the celebration of life service for long-time peace activist and founding director of Christian Peacemaking Teams for 16 years, Gene Stoltzfus (1940-2010), which was held in Emo, Ontario.

The service was relatively small, as Stoltzfus and his wife Dorothy Friesen now lived in Fort Frances, Ontario, some distance from family roots and former places of work such as Chicago, where they resided for many years. (Memorials will also be held in Goshen, Indiana, and other places.) So it felt intimate and informal, with some of his favourite songs (including multiple singings of “Ubi caritas et amor” – “where charity and love are found, God is there”), Scriptures upon which his work was based, words from his writings, and many personal remembrances.

We sat in a kind of oval shape around a table with flowers, candles, a twig basket he had fashioned, and the copy of the Martyrs Mirror passed on to him by his father, which was so significant in shaping who be became. He spoke of this in his last article at his blog, Peace Probe, but also a May 4, 2006 column called “Beyond Imagination.” Continue reading →

Living, speaking, side by side (Rwanda 4)

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(To conclude the series on Jean Hatzfeld’s books on the Rwandan genocide.)

In the Nyamata district of Rwanda, many Tutsis trying to escape Hutu killers during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 hid in the mud and foliage of papyrus swamps. Those who fled to the much less dense Kayumba forest had to rely on running for their lives. Said one,

When the killers seemed to be upon us, we’d scatter in all directions to give everyone a chance: basically, we adopted the antelope’s strategy.

In this his third book on the genocide, French journalist Jean Hatzfeld adopts some of that same “scattering” strategy to give us a sense of what life is like now, some 15 years later, for both survivors and perpetrators, once again occupying the same hills and towns. What I mean is, Hatzfeld tells one story with this perspective, and then another from that, describing one scene after another, until you feel that you’ve not stood in one spot with only one notion of things, but run about to many places and heard many. “Traces and encounters,” Hatzfeld calls them, as he picks up with many of the same people we heard from in his earlier two books, except that killers and survivors will now appear in the same book, side by side. Continue reading →