Throughout the weekend I’ve been getting desperate emails from my students, who are finishing up their revisions before turning in their final papers to me on Monday. Having just waded through my own revision work, I am tempted to send out an email telling them to give it up: at some point you do indeed start making it worse. Interestingly enough, one part of the paper I just wrote concerned the revisions that Faulkner made to the stories that later comprised Go Down, Moses. Only one critic in all of those I read thought he may not have improved his work by revising it. Apparently we’re reluctant to see our efforts as wasted, and apparently critics are as susceptible to this as college students.
Erin
Alan Schmierer