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In this chapter, Greenberg's working definition of editing is tested against three points of comparison: the parallels between editing another person's work and revision of one's own text; written language and the mediation of visual languages such as film; and finally, editing during the initial, pre-publication making of a text and mediations that take place after that stage, such as translation. The chapter teases out the concerns they hold in common as well as their differences and pays attention to the idea of "difficulty". Greenberg proposes a new concept of the "ideal editor" as a way of understanding the convergence between an author seeking distance from a text, who tries to think like an editor, and the editor who imagines what is desired or needed by the author. Their roles are different, but not on the simple lines of a critical-creative divide.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-92246-1_2

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