ARGUMENTS
123
Stark Young, in 1947, told me his reasons for resigning from the
New
Republic-including
the messing up of his writing, which he said had
never been done before ; and for years thereafter he continued to speak
of this indignantly; "Why, that man Hatch made me sound like an
ignoramus. He made me say things that were so embarrassing I s.ome–
times had tQ write
to
the people to explain I hadn't said them!" Mr.
Hatch clearly was one of those with a compulsion tQ rewrite other
people's writing; and what he hadn't refrained from doing
to
the
writing of our greatest critic he would certainly do to mine. And in
fact, whereas until then my task when I had received proofs had been
merely to correct printers' errors, when Mr. Hatch tQok over I had
to spend hours on the additional task of dealing with his changes. For
it tODk time to find not just right words tQ substitute for the ones he
had substituted, but right words that fitted into the same space as his ;
additiDnal time had to be spent on the letter in which I a ttempted to
make my substitutions acceptable to him-not only by my reasDning but
by my care not to appear to be interfering with this particular way
.of
making like an editor that had
Sa
much importance for him ; and this
meant spending some time deciding which of his changes tQ let stand
as the price of undQing the worse .ones. After several weeks I suggested
that I send with my column a carbon copy that he wDuld send back
with his editorial revisiQns, which would be easier to deal with there
than on the proofs. He accepted the suggestiQn ; and from that time I
received each week the annotated carbon copy and a letter raising
additiDnal questions about passages in which he had made nQ changes.
I am not saying Mr. Hatch didn't occasionally make a change
that was valid and worth having; and I recall thanking him for his help
and patience with a book review that had given me much trDuble. But
most ,of his changes were unnecessary, and often ridiculously or annoy–
ingly so. I had referred tQ Toscanini's "courtesy and cDnsideration to
servants" ; Mr. Hatch made it "toward servants," and kept "tDward"
even after I pointed out that one was courteous
to
somebody, not
toward
him. I had said my apprehensiDns "proved justified" ; he made
it "were justified." I had said that ".one critic develQped his idea that
.. . " ; he made it "one critic thinks that ...." I had spoken of "the
absence of the power of real creative invention"; he made it "the
absence of real creative power." I had said .one had heard in Cantelli's
performances "the authority of the kind of knowledge of everything in
the score and everything going on in the orchestra . . . that commands
the respect and response of an orchestra"; he crossed out "kind of." But
where I had spoken of Furtwangler's "vagaries and excesses which
destroyed all coherence," he made it "which served to destroy all
