Book Reviews
IR Staff •
Feb 20, 2011 
Blogger ( Conjugate Visits ) and author June Casagrande (“It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences”), recently shared how she would have edited Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.
Casagrande also noted that, as written, most editors would have rejected Larsson’s manuscript “with a note like, ‘Good story. But the writing’s not quite there.’”
Following is an excerpt from the edited manuscript, with Casagrande’s notes in caps:
“Dr. Jonasson was woken by a nurse five minutes before the helicopter was expected to land. (PROBABLY NOT A GOOD IDEA TO START WITH TWO PASSIVES IN THE VERY FIRST SENTENCE. PLS REVISE.) It was just before 1:30 in the morning. “What? he said (ASKED?), confused. (IS THERE SOME SIMPLE WAY TO SHOW HIS CONFUSION?) “Rescue Service helicopter coming in. Two patients. An injured man and a younger woman. The woman has gunshot wounds.” “All right,” Jonasson said wearily. (HAVING HIM SAY “ALL RIGHT” SEEMS UNNECESSARY. WOULD IT BE MORE INTERESTING TO SAY WHAT HE DID RATHER THAN WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID IT?)”
Found any editing mistakes, typos or grammatical errors in your favorite traditionally published book? Send ‘em along for upcoming columns!
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
Editors these days are mostly B-school grads with little or no education in Liberal Arts–another sad result of the corporitization of publishing and a contributor to its demise.
But even back in The Day it was hit miss for the midlist: Readying my old OP stuff for epublishing’s brave new world, it’s obvious that of my four Big 6 published titles only one had the benefit of anything but copy editing. (I miss copy editors.)
I’ve Fixed them and am again sending them out into the world, grateful that epublishing grants books a second chance and a fragile immortality long after their authors have faded away. Life doesn’t offer many rewind buttons.
Great pice (sic) on the state of traditional publishing, and how inferior novels ofen suffer the same plight as ‘some’ self-published books. I have recently re-read a couple of Updike novels, and one by Joyce Carol Oates, and found typos, misspellings and dropped words. Now that the late Larsson has sold more than 40 million books, maybe his publisher can take them off the market for two weeks and subject them to a good editor? (Right…that’ll happen…) You too, Jonathan Frazen. Turgid writing by both, indeed.