Vance's letter to editors

[Estraa]

This is too good to miss, a letter to his own editor in fact. The only effect of pedantry is to produce pedants (e.g. readers who can't adjust to a writer's personal style; not to mention when there are enough such readers their failure will spill over to the publishing world that created those readers in the first place; the result will be an endlessly accelerating unstoppable self-feeding spiral of literary dullness and homogeneity; not that it's avoidable, considering it has already happened).

I believe I am within my rights to quote the excerpt here, Vance to his editor:

Two matters: the first we have discussed before and you have always been most indulgent; but I will bring the matter up again, for you to wave in front of your proof-readers, stating: “Vance is a frightful curmudgeon; he thinks his writing is revelation from heaven. He points out that the rabbis don’t go proof-reading and fiddling with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and that he doesn’t want any similar underlings messing with his stuff, either.

Mention this as well: “Jack Vance adjusts the punctuation in his stuff like a skilled mechanic tuning up a Lamborghini Grand Prix race-car. He examines each colon and semi-colon separately for quality and throws back the rejects.

“The same cautions apply to his spelling, word-usage, and nomenclature unless the occasion is clearly a typo. Hyphens are more ‘off-world’ and ‘off-worlder’.

In regard to spelling I am inconsistent, and in fact see no particular imperative for consistency, in any case. I tend to use the spelling which seems to accord best with the mood of the sentence and attendant circumstances. It is a most complicated business, Glamour, honour, armour all must use the u; color sometimes, and maybe some of the others. But they do not have to be all one way or all the other; this is pedantry.”

[Aaron Singleton]

I loved reading this. The funny thing is that the letter reads like an episode from one of his stories. Classic stuff.