Posted inNonfiction, Quotes

In Honor of National Grammar Day: What It Was Like to Copy-Edit Pauline Kael

When Pauline Kael typed “prevert” instead of “pervert,” she meant “prevert” (unless she was reviewing something by Jacques Prévert). Luckily, she was kind, and if you changed it she would just change it back and stet it without upbraiding you. Kael revised up until closing, and though we lackeys resented writers who kept changing “doughnut” to “coffee cake” then back to “doughnut” and then “coffee cake” again, because it meant more work for us, Kael’s changes were always improvements.

Posted inEditor's Pick

A Brain with a Heart

Inside the life and work of Oliver Sacks, whose newest book is Hallucinations: “He has been in psychoanalysis, continuously and with the same Freudian interlocutor, for 46 years—remarkable for a materialist neurologist. ‘We were both young men, and now we’re old men. There’s a longitudinal study for you,’ he says. The two remain on formal […]

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