“Some wouldn’t agree with you,” said McCoy.
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“Certainly not the people who awarded you the Academy Award.”
Post shrugged. He didn’t seem to enjoy flattery, even though he enjoyed center stage.
“And you have had considerable experience as an editor?”
“I worked as an editor before my first novel was published and for two years after that. Since then I’ve mostly edited my own work, which needs a lot, I might add. I also edited my second wife’s books, though she denies that now.”
There was scattered chuckling in the courtroom.
“You created a cutting-edge magazine in 1973.”
“Tower. Those were cutting times. But it didn’t last long, the magazine, I mean. I don’t suppose the age of Aquarius lasted long, either.”
“And you were editor in chief of Tower?”
“Yes. It was go, go, go. I was a lot younger, then, but I was aging three to one. In the end I decided as much as I hated writing, I hated telling people what to write even more.”
“Mr. Post, several weeks ago my office forwarded to you three manuscripts selected at random from among the seven manuscripts seized by the police at the headquarters of Redux.”
“Yes. They were manuscripts in the return packages.
That is, they were about to be returned to the writers.”
“So these manuscripts had been edited by Redux?”
“Well, I couldn’t say by whom exactly. They were covered with red ink and there was a letter from Avery McDonald in each.”
“And each letter stated that it had been edited.”
“Yes.”
“And did you examine the editorial marks?”
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“Closely. It was a chore. They were ridiculous.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“They didn’t say anything significant. Oh, there were chicken scratches on every page, a plethora of them, but they were largely pointless.”
“So, in your opinion, there was absolutely nothing helpful to a writer.”
“It was all nonsense.”
McCoy handed him one of the three manuscripts.
“You’ve flagged several pages. Would you like to show the jury?”
Southerlyn pushed an electronics cart to the front of the courtroom while McCoy raised a projection screen. Post handed a sheet to McCoy, who focused it in the opaque projector.
“This is page one hundred of a manuscript entitled Summers with Sonny,” said Post. “I think it was supposed to be like Tuesdays with Morrie. You see all that red ink…”
“To the untrained eye, it looks like a lot of work was expended on this. What do you make of this effort?”
“Umm, to begin with, look at the commas in this paragraph. “Here the sentence reads, ‘Sonny whacked hot and cold about Vietnam bouncing like a basket ball…’ Notice the typo, two words for ‘basketball.’
‘Among opinions, he sometimes thought we ought to drop a nuclear bomb on the Kong. Other times he said we ought to tell them to give us fourty-eight hours to get out of town.’”
“And the editor for Redux inserted commas?”
“There, between ‘hot’ and ‘and.’ A high schooler knows it doesn’t belong there. Then there’s one between ‘thought’ and ‘we.’ Why? And is that a 211
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comma in red ink between ‘basket’ and ‘ball’? It’s as if whoever this is has a quota for inserting commas and doesn’t much care where they go. But does this knucklehead mark the obvious errors? You don’t
‘whack’ hot and cold, you ‘wax’ hot and cold. ‘Fourty’
is a misspelling for ‘forty,’ but my absolute favorite is the misspelling of Cong. Unless the author intended to nuke King Kong.”
There were more chuckles among the spectators, provoking a grave look from the judge.
“I don’t mean to make light,” said Post. “My point is that anyone who was really editing this book would have noticed at least one of these things. And the manuscript is rife with things inserted in it that either don’t add anything, or definitely damage it. The editor overlooks obvious errors and then compounds the problems. Asleep at the wheel, I’d say.”
“And this is a representative page?”
“It is typical.”
“What about these lines and more general comments?”
“Well,” he said, “this line is supposed to tell the author to move the paragraph, I think. But if you follow the events on the page, this would split off the talk about Vietnam and place it between two paragraphs about Sonny’s oiling his wheelchair.”
“And what is this handwritten remark here?”
“It says ‘More plot!’” Post nearly cracked up and squeezed his nose to keep from laughing.
“Is that funny, Mr. Post?”
“It means absolutely nothing. Plot doesn’t come in amounts, so it’s impossible to know what the so-called editor means. More incidents? More surprises?
What?”
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“Perhaps you could comment on the editing in another manuscript,” said McCoy.
Post had similar comments on two pages in a second book, and noted a seventy-five-page gap on which no marks at all appeared. Perhaps this was because the pages did not need editing? “God no!”
said Post and proceeded to point out, among other unmarked gaffes, that a thin waiter on page 52 had become a fat waiter on page 55. McCoy allowed Post to expose more sloppy editing and weak advice in a third manuscript, then decided the point had been made well enough that he didn’t want to bore the jurors.
“In conclusion, Mr. Post, as an expert in the fields of writing and editing, what is your opinion of Redux’s editing work on these and the other manuscripts you reviewed?”
“I don’t see that they’ve been edited at all. They’ve been marked up, but not edited. In my opinion, these customers didn’t get anything for their money.”
“Objection,” said Herlihy.
“On what basis?” said Judge Samuels. “An expert witness is allowed to express an expert opinion.”
Herlihy blinked. “We object to the characterization.
He said the clients didn’t get anything. Obviously, they got something. Just because the controversial Mr. Post doesn’t approve of my clients’ work doesn’t mean the work wasn’t done.”
“Well, then, I object to Mr. Herlihy’s characterization of Mr. Post,” said McCoy.
“But I like being thought of as ‘controversial’!” said Post.
Chuckling broke out, even among the jury.
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Samuels rapped her gavel. “Mr. Post…” warned the judge.
“I apologize,” said Post.
“The jury should disregard Mr. Herlihy’s characterizations of Mr. Post,” she said. “If you want to discredit Mr. Post’s qualifications, you’ll have to do that on cross.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” said Herlihy.
“And you can also challenge the assertion that the McDonalds’ clients got nothing on your cross-examination, if you choose to do so. An expert witness is allowed to express an opinion. That’s what expert witnesses do, counselor. Overruled.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” he said, sitting.
“It was worthless,” interrupted Post.
“You don’t have a question, Mr. Post,” said the judge. “Now, people, let’s try to maintain the dignity of the legal system and get on with it.”
“Mr. Post,” said McCoy, “for the benefit of the counsel for the defense, could you clarify your last statement concerning the value of the editing jobs which you reviewed?”
“I’ll say it again: they were worthless.”
“And do you mean by that merely that you disagree with the recommendations given by the editors?”
“No,” said Post, “I see dozens of marks, but they a
re random and meaningless. No one really edited these manuscripts. They simply made them look as if they had been edited.”
Herlihy interrupted again. “He’s speculating on the motives of the defendants. He’s not here as a psychi-atrist.”
Samuels exhaled and looked toward the jury.
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“Disregard Mr. Post’s comments about the intent of the editor or editors.”
McCoy pursued the issue in another way. “Mr. Post, judging solely from the manuscripts, is it your opinion that the extensive markings constituted editing in a professional sense?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Thank you, Mr. Post.” McCoy returned to his table.
Herlihy stood. “Mr. Post, we are honored to have you here.”
“Thank you.” Post looked embarrassed to be flattered again.
Herlihy strolled near the witness box. “Isn’t editing really a matter of taste?”
“It is and it isn’t.”
“Could you clarify that for me and for those of us who are not writers? What is, and what isn’t, a matter of taste?”
“There are things which are simply wrong and things which are a matter of taste. Grammatical things, for example. Punctuation. Those kinds of mechanical things. And say you have a character born and bred in Manhattan and he speaks with a Louisiana accent. That’s wrong as well. It’s what Aristotle calls an inappropriate characterization.”
“What if the character feigns a Louisiana accent?”
“Well, if such a thing is justified by the context of the story, it wouldn’t be wrong, necessarily.”
“I see,” said Herlihy, “‘the context.’ Is that what you mean by taste?”
“No, I mean whether you choose to give a character blonde hair or red.”
“Well, suppose the character is of a racial type—Hispanic, African-American—that does not 215
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have blond hair, could you give such a character blond hair in a book?”
“If it were justified by the context. Maybe there’s a genetic mutation. Maybe the character was exposed to a strange chemical accident. Maybe it’s blond out of a box.”
“So anything goes then, in fiction?”
“No. If it’s justified in the story. It has to be justified by the integrity of the story.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Post, but these concepts are difficult for me. These would be things that one would learn as a writer?”
“Most good writers have an instinct, but they also learn about the integrity of the story as they develop their skills. At least one hopes they do.”
“But could there be a difference of opinion about what constitutes this integrity you refer to?”
“Yes. On a certain level. Not on the basic level.”
“And these examples we were discussing, a native New Yorker with a Louisiana accent, it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong?”
“In certain contexts, no.”
“So there’s nothing you would describe as being always and absolutely wrong then?”
“In a given manuscript, some things can be absolutely wrong.”
“I’m still a little confused.” Herlihy turned and grabbed a book off his desk. “Would you mind reading the marked passage, ah, right there?”
Post looked at the text, flipped the book and quickly looked at the spine. “‘I doan k’yer what de widder say, he warn’t no wise man, nuther. He had some of the dadfetchedes’ ways I ever see.’”
Herlihy put a photocopy on the opaque projector.
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“Now, Mr. Post, are there things that are wrong in this passage?”
“We’ll give Mark Twain the benefit of the doubt.
This is from Huckleberry Finn.”
“But what about those spellings in there? ‘Widder,’
‘warn’t,’ and so on.”
“Mark Twain is trying to simulate the speech of the slave Jim. The context of the story makes it appropriate.”
“So even spelling is a matter of taste.”
“This isn’t a matter of taste, here. It would lose a lot by having Jim speak like the president of Harvard.”
Post hmmphed. “Or like you.”
“I see, but don’t some people regard all this simula-tion, as you call it, to be offensive to African-Americans? I mean, it makes Jim into a stereotype, doesn’t it?”
“No, Jim is almost the only honest person in the book. Huckleberry Finn doesn’t understand how so-ciety can oppress such a man, not even credit Jim with being a man.”
Herlihy nodded. “And what about down here?
Would you read the marked passage?”
Post scanned it, glanced up at Herlihy and the judge and read. “‘I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there warn’t no getting it out again.
He was the most down on Solomon of any nigger I ever see.’”
McCoy’s eyes met Southerlyn’s. There were two black men and one black woman on the jury. Who’d have thought this case would suggest playing the race card?
“If you had been editing this passage, Mr. Post, would you have changed it?” Herlihy asked.
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“I certainly hope not!” said Post. “It’s intended to simulate Huck Finn’s dialect and the time in which he lived.”
“But isn’t it wrong? Isn’t it offensive? Shouldn’t it be changed?”
“Good God,” said Post. “It’s Huckleberry Finn. I suppose you’d burn the book.”
“But the spellings are wrong,” said Herlihy, “the use of the word, pardon me, ‘nigger,’ is in bad taste, wouldn’t you say?”
“It was written over a hundred years ago.”
“Should such racist things have been edited from the book?”
“No. If you get racism out of it,” said Post, “you don’t understand the book.”
“Your Honor,” said McCoy, “Mark Twain isn’t on trial here! And this is hardly the place for a discussion of the merits of Huckleberry Finn.”
“I’m merely trying to establish exactly on what basis the witness claims that editing is not a matter of individual taste,” Herlihy said. “Simply because Mr. Post doesn’t agree with the work of my clients doesn’t mean there is an intent to defraud.”
“I think your point is made, Mr. Herlihy,” said the judge.
“I have other examples,” he said.
“Are we going to do all of world literature?” snorted McCoy.
“I merely wanted to show there are no quotation marks in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and no paragraph breaks in No One Writes to the Colonel by Nobel prize winner Gabriel García-Márquez.”
“This is muddying the water,” said McCoy. “The 218
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state will concede there are numerous instances in literature in which writers do not follow convention.”
“And that proves there are no absolute rules, doesn’t it?” said Herlihy. “One editor may think one thing, while another thinks something different.”
“Nonsense!” said Post.
“Be quiet, Mr. Post,” said the judge.
“But it’s a misrepresentation,” Post insisted. “The context and the intent of the author determines…”
“Be quiet,” she repeated. Post crossed his arms.
Herlihy picked up another thick book.
“Forget it, Mr. Herlihy,” said Samuels, “Mr. McCoy has conceded that many writers do not follow convention. Move on.”
“But I want it clear,” said McCoy, “that the witness is not saying that anything goes, that editing is a matter of taste.”
“Is Mr. McCoy’s characterization of your opinion correct?” The judge asked Post.
“Yes,” said Post. “Just because great authors bend rules, it doesn’t mean that there are none. It all depends on the context. An editor assesses the context and follows the internal logic of the individual work.”
&nb
sp; “Exactly our point,” said Herlihy. “It is the editor who assesses.”
“Let’s move on,” said the judge.
“One other question, Mr. Post,” said Herlihy. “You undoubtedly are a very busy man. Your time is quite valuable. Can you tell this court what consideration you received from the state for testifying today?”
Wise, who had watched most of the previous questioning with a bemused expression, turned toward Herlihy.
“Nothing,” said Post.
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Herlihy blinked, then smiled. “So you did it for the publicity?”
Post’s eyes flashed. “No, I did it because I don’t like to see people taken advantage of. Who knows—”
“Thank you, Mr. Post,” said Herlihy.
“Can I finish?” said Post.
“Mr. Herlihy questioned Mr. Post’s integrity, Your Honor,” said McCoy.
“So I should finish?” said Post.
“Yes,” said the judge.
“I am a member of the executive board of the Author’s Guild. We do what we can to protect our fellow writers from being exploited. I looked over the materials and it confirmed what I have heard for years, that Redux is a scam.”
The judge anticipated Herlihy’s objection and spoke to the jury. “What Mr. Post has heard for years is not evidence, nor is his characterization of Redux as a scam. You are here to determine whether the defendants were engaged in a crime. ‘Scam’ is not a legal term. Mr. Post is not offering a legal opinion.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Herlihy. “No further questions.”
“Mr. Wise, will this be a lengthy cross? It’s lunch-time.”
“I’ll be brief,” said Wise, “so Mr. Post can go about the important business of being one of America’s greatest authors.”
“Just move it along, then,” said Judge Samuels.
“Mr. Post,” said Wise, “you have had many manuscripts edited by house editors, am I correct?”
“Every one of two dozen or so.”
“House editors are editors employed by the publisher, like Mr. Rosserman, am I correct?”
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“They’re called ‘house editors’ because they are salaried or under contract to the publishing house.”
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