"I feel sorry for people who have to edit me. Which is why book writing is by far the most enjoyable. Really the only thing it's based on is whether it's good or not. No book editor, in my experience, is getting a manuscript and try to rewrite it"
About this Quote
Klosterman’s charm has always been that he treats pop culture like a serious room you’re allowed to laugh in, and this quote is doing the same kind of double act: it’s a self-deprecating flex disguised as empathy. “I feel sorry for people who have to edit me” reads like an apology, but it also asserts that his voice is a stubborn, overgrown thing - idiosyncratic enough to be a burden, valuable enough to be protected.
The real target isn’t editors as individuals; it’s the ecosystem of writing that isn’t book writing. In magazines, online outlets, and anything tied to a fast news cycle, editing often becomes a proxy for branding, liability management, and audience calibration. “Whether it’s good or not” is a pointed fantasy of pure craft - an imagined meritocracy where taste and clarity win over tone policing, SEO demands, and the constant pressure to pre-chew ideas into shareable certainty. Klosterman’s subtext is that books still grant a writer something like sovereignty: room to be digressive, contradictory, slow.
His line about book editors not trying to rewrite manuscripts is both a compliment and a boundary marker. He’s praising the best version of that relationship - editors as structural and conceptual collaborators, not ghost-authors - while quietly insisting on authorial ownership as the core commodity. Coming from a critic, not a novelist, the context matters: criticism lives and dies on voice. If you sand down the sentences, you don’t just change the style; you change the thinking.
The real target isn’t editors as individuals; it’s the ecosystem of writing that isn’t book writing. In magazines, online outlets, and anything tied to a fast news cycle, editing often becomes a proxy for branding, liability management, and audience calibration. “Whether it’s good or not” is a pointed fantasy of pure craft - an imagined meritocracy where taste and clarity win over tone policing, SEO demands, and the constant pressure to pre-chew ideas into shareable certainty. Klosterman’s subtext is that books still grant a writer something like sovereignty: room to be digressive, contradictory, slow.
His line about book editors not trying to rewrite manuscripts is both a compliment and a boundary marker. He’s praising the best version of that relationship - editors as structural and conceptual collaborators, not ghost-authors - while quietly insisting on authorial ownership as the core commodity. Coming from a critic, not a novelist, the context matters: criticism lives and dies on voice. If you sand down the sentences, you don’t just change the style; you change the thinking.
Quote Details
| Topic | Book |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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