David Abram, Hannah Arendt, Charlie Baxter, John Berger, Nina Bernstein, Julia Blackburn, Charlie Burns, Sarah Burns, Jung Chang, Jon Halliday, Linda Colly, Simon Critchley, Antonio Damasio, Jim Davidson, Nick Dawidoff, Alan De Botton, Geoff Dyer, David Engleman, Gretrel Ehrlich, James Fallows, Charles Fenyvesi, Norma Field, Judith Freeman, James Gleick, Mischa Glenny, Rebecca Goldstein, Robert Gotlieb, Robert Kimball, Ramachandra Guha, Ha Jin, Jonathan Haidt, Richard Holmes, Pico Iyer, Susan Jacoby, Joe Kane, Ben Katchor, Daniel Kehlmann, Verlyn Klinkenborg, William Leach, Jill Lepore, James Levin, Alan Lightman, Ma Jian, Tom Mallon, Benoit Mandelbrot, Cormac McCarthy, Richard McGuire, Joseph Mitchell, Sherwin Nuland, Cynthia Ozick, Sydney Padua, Jed Perl, Adam Philip, Maria Popova, Hugh Raffles, Marc Reisner, Theo Richmond, Philip Rieff, Witold Rybczynski, Oliver Sacks, Marjan Satrapi, Casey Schwartz, Orville Schell, Rachel Seifert, Neil Shuban, Art Spiegelman, Wallace Stegner, Alessandro Stille, Frank Sulloway, Chris Ware, Terry Tempest Williams, Michael Winerip, Marie Winn, Robert Wright….Yeah, that’s a long list, and it’s still incomplete. These are writers (who were/are thinkers too) that came under the editorial sway of one person, Dan Frank. A great editor, like a great piano tuner, brings out resonances in an instrument, and those tones cut through the noise—making writers’ talents—their stance, style, essence—accessible to them and to the rest of us.
A great editor is a master interrogator, someone who almost always plays the “good cop.” A great editor provides a clear reflection in the mist of ego that helps writers focus their felt thoughts—and get to the pith of it. A great editor plays the long game, sustaining writers, giving them fresh legs when they’re in danger of fading.
Consider how books enter the world and how they reproduce, living through multiple cultures and morphing into other mediums. The word seems to have been swamped by the image lately, but writers are still major. Books and the authors who produce them remain the original global network. Editors, like lubricants, facilitate the expression and movement of mind through cultures.
Great editors leave their egos behind when performing acts of clarification. They cultivate the compounds that enable writers to become larger than themselves—catalyzing a kind of chemistry between I and Eye, without imposing their own vision on a writer’s creation. Though perhaps a measure of imposition is inevitable. Sometimes editors must be ruthless in pruning material to allow the truest creative imperatives to emerge clearly in a work.
Dan Frank reminded me of a great Samurai, wielding his pencil like the legendary warrior, slicing the victim without the victim knowing it or feeling it. Dan was able to draw his writers into the creative fray, baiting them through gentle interrogation until they went for the edit(s).