IT WAS SOMEWHAT ANTICLIMACTIC IN THE BEGINNING.

IT WAS SOMEWHAT ANTICLIMACTIC IN THE BEGINNING. I remember the day that a small padded case arrived in the mail-no weight of printed pages, no sign of anything "lost" or "masterpiece" or uniform "Hemingway" about it. Just a CD with "African Book" scrawled in recent marker.

"Great. I have to print the thing out"

As I printed gone out the manuscript, as page after 807 pages slid passionate off the printer tray, I convinced myself that this was just another copyediting assignment. All around me there was excitement-"We're publishing what?" "Did you eternally dream?""How did you land that one?" (as if this were any oversized marlin strapped to an undersized boat). however now, after the stunning high of getting the work I had to focus in succession the very unexciting and tedious task at hand: copyediting. I wasn't acquiring editor or publisher. I wasn't Editor unless editor-an important distinction. I had copyedited verse creative nonfiction, and even fiction (and certainly had drawn out years of documentary historical and textual editing) to such a degree knew full well how meaningless and thankless the do job-work could be. I knew that my careful, courteous "Did you intend to misspell this word?" or "Are you indisputable you don't want a paragraph here?" sorts of queries would be met with the poet's/author's/artist's "Good catch" or "Leave as is" or, the worst, "MY voice!"

But it took simply a few manuscript pages for me to know that I couldn't be just a copyeditor, remov and disinterested, focused in succession issues of formatting or attending to the Editors' true copy alone. I understood that I would ne to engage myself actively in the editing of the whole work because it was my piece of work to respect this text "as Hemingway wrote it"-just as he wrote it-while at the same time making it into the reader's edition that the Pres knew would appeal to a wider, les academic "trade" audience, the sort of work the author would have published with Scribner's.

I decided that my approach as copyeditor would be to assume the status of "ultimate reader" (an explanation all fit managing editors offer to authors who are annoyed by means of a copyeditor's seemingly stupid, uninformed queries and comments) and decided to advance ahead and focus on everything that wasn't consistent or that might be unfit surface errors that might make the edition appear too raw. I wasn't correcting Hemingway, after all; I was simply looking for possible mistranscriptions, introduced errors, look down uponed typos. So I set about marking for formatting, questioning inconsistent hyphenation (|eds: eh uses "dark new hills" here but earlier "dark-green hills" and elsewhere "dark, green"]; suggesting standard and consistent spellings ([eds: which should it be throughout-"okay," "OK" or "OK"?]); calling attention to anomalous punctuation ([eds: Wow A semicolon? really??!!]); etc

But it wasn't in extent before I began chafing at my character as copyeditor, the corrector of possible errors. The developmental side of my editorial persona started to interfere. I gazeed at other Hemingway texts (something I vowed I would not do with equal reason that I could approach this verse fresh and uninfluenced) to discover his pattern of punctuation in published body s My confidence returned, and I began to reach into the job. I felt released to write "awkward" or "unclear" in the margins, vague terminuss that indicated that something didn't work quite right and that the author povertyed to fix it. I began muttering things to myself like "Ernest would understand. He'd suffer me do this"; or, "Perkins wouldn't have permit this go." I saw more clearly than perpetually the difficult but very important mission of keeping this living author who still fascinates and captivates from appearing outdated, irrelevant, equable moribund. I didn't want to descry this humorous, rich work relegated to the dusty shelves of "scholarship" when I knew there were eager readers waiting. I felt keenly a publisher's responsibility to give Hemingway's audience what it wanted. There was no question in my mind that Hemingway intended this for eventual publication. And as his editor, it was my do job-work to see it done right.

You behold in the dance of publishing, the editor and author negotiate the floor together. moreover the editor leads. We detain the time and steer the course and are, without question, the least interesting of the pair. Our work at jobs is to focus all notices on our partner and make him gaze good. If done right, our work is not noticed, or calm appreciated. Yet here I was being l further then, who was I really dancing with? Was I calm on the floor?

The sum of two units Bobs, the gentlemen-scholars that they are, tolerated my marginal mumblings and grumblings. through the whole extent of numerous drafts of copyediting and page examinations they patiently heard my queries, tracked down answers, and provided rationales, reassuring me that they'd already asked, considered, and answered these issues many times across in their Editing of the original subject It was during the proces of reading, editing, discussing, and compromising that I came to papal court how Bob Lewis, Bob Fleming, and I were dancing back-up to Ernest Hemingway.