Monday Interview: Shannon Ravenel

Day 1 of Larry Brown Week.

Just before his death on Nov. 24, 2004, Larry Brown sent a manuscript for his next novel, A Miracle of Catfish, to his agent. Under the title, he had typed, “a novel in progress,” and elsewhere he had made notes for the final chapters that would tie up a few loose ends.

Brown obviously never got the chance to finish the book, but his longtime editor, Shannon Ravenel, was asked by Brown’s widow and two close friends to edit the manuscript and publish it. She did, but only after consulting with several others in the field to determine just what role she should play. She decided that she would make no changes – “substantive or minor – to the plot, the structure (or) the characterizations.” Instead, she simply cut where she felt Brown went on beyond the point.

In her editor’s note at the opening of the book, she writes, “Once Larry Brown had mastered his laconic style, the first-draft manuscripts of his books were nearly always so polished stylistically that my job as editor mostly involved showing him places I felt the novels would benefit from trimming… Having honed his skills on the short-story form, he reveled in the wide space that novels offer.”

Throughout the text, she simply inserts an ellipsis – like this: […] – to indicate her cuts. She reduced a 710-page manuscript to a 450-page novel, still with the caveat “a novel in progress.” The entire manuscript is housed at the University of Mississippi, and in that editor’s note, Ravenel welcomes readers to compare it to the published work, and to ask questions about her choices. Without having the luxury of reading the original manuscript, I did have questions, and took her invitation to ask about the editing process.

What follows is a Q&A conducted by e-mail with Ravenel, in which she discusses Brown’s work, the stylistic detour he took in his penultimate novel, Rabbit Factory – a detour that led the two to part ways professionally – and what she sees as his lasting place in the world of letters.

TIRBD: You write in your introduction to A Miracle of Catfish that you welcome questions about your edits. Have you received many thus far, and have any made you question your choices?

SR: There have been many reviews of the novel, almost all of them very favorable. Most reviewers had quibbles with my edits – why didn’t I cut more? Why did I cut anything at all? What good are the notes at the end? I haven’t had to answer these face to face (or in writing, until just now!), but if I should find myself needing to, I’d just have to say that I did what I thought was best under the circumstances. I talked with a number of scholars and other writers before I set about editing the book. The one thing I knew I should not do was try to change it in any way except cutting. I also knew that I should not try to hide the fact that it was unfinished.

Why not edit out some of the tangents that Brown didn’t have the chance to resolve, which may have resulted in a tighter novel that felt closer to being finished?

I did edit out a good many such tangents. Cutting 30,000 words is no small feat. There are tangents upon tangents missing from the published book.

Was there ever any thought to just publishing it as he submitted it, without the cuts?

I read the manuscript twice before doing anything. The things that had worried me the first time through – riffs that went on past the point and the reader’s interest, some stuff that seemed not to have any connection with the main thrust of the novel, a character who showed up early but never reappeared – bothered me the second time through. And those that bothered me the third time through got cut. I’m an editor. It’s my nature to believe that manuscripts can be improved. Larry and I had, except for Rabbit Factory, worked easily together on revision of his books. I thought he’d be glad to lose some things that didn’t seem necessary or relevant. So, I guess the answer is no – I never considered publishing the manuscript as was. It was unfinished which meant Larry expected to do revision. I thought the novel deserved some cutting. So I did it.

You clearly wanted a sense of transparency in your editing, and including Brown’s notes for the closing chapters of the book seem part of that effort to keep it as close to his vision as possible. That said, including them does draw attention to the “in progress” nature of the book. Did you deliberate about making choices like that, knowing it might put off people who don’t want to be left hanging at the end?

There was really no way to avoid the “in progress” status of the novel. Larry had himself typed “a novel in progress” under the title. Once those notes for the ending were found, those of us who had the responsibility for publishing novel felt they had to be included.

If he had lived, what would the process of bringing this book to print have been like? How different would the finished product have been?

If he had lived, he would have written the ending. A novel with an ending and a living author is a very different thing to edit than one without either. I really can’t say how different the book might have been.

Brown told me in an interview around the time of Rabbit Factory that he left Algonquin because the publisher didn’t like that book. I assume that means you didn’t like it. Do you still feel that way? Does that time and his decision to go elsewhere affect the way you approached this project?

I read two drafts of style="">The Rabbit Factory and Larry and I had many conversations about it and about why I didn’t like it. The reason was that, to me, it read as if it had been written with Larry’s tongue firmly in his cheek. That stance struck me as unfortunate. We couldn’t agree on much of anything about the novel except that it might be better edited by someone else. We agreed to this amicably, though I hated to see him leave Algonquin and knew I would miss working with him, that all of us here would. To have the opportunity of editing A Miracle of Catfish is an honor I have cherished. To have published it is an honor Algonquin itself has cherished.

Brown also mentioned at that time another book, The Indonesian Subterranean Termite Soldier Blues. Does that exist as anything more than a title for a forthcoming project? Are there other works of his that might see the light some day?

I don’t know of The Indonesian Subterranean Termite Soldier Blues. (What a great title!) Larry’s widow, Mary Annie Brown, asked two of his friends to sort his papers after his death. They may know about that project.

How did Brown evolve as a writer in the time that you edited him, and where did it seem he was headed?

Larry Brown was the hardest working writer I’ve ever known. He never stopped experimenting and his work continued to evolve and grow. I have always thought – from the very first thing I read by him (the short story, “Facing the Music,” in 1987 in Mississippi Review) – that he had a quality that set him apart: his empathy and his willingness to stare human pain squarely in the face. I believe he’s a very important contemporary American writer and that his books will become part of the canon.