Authors Electric

 Alicia Sammons I worked as an editor for the better part of my too long professional career. Editing can be demanding, but I never thought of it as a particularly glamourous or creative calling. Over the years I climbed my way up from proofreader to senior editorial positions on magazine, major metropolitan newspapers, and editing for independent publisher.  I always felt in awe of writers and aspired to their magic with words, an assessment shared in popular culture. We see a lot of juicy movies about authors like The Hours and Midnight in Paris. On the other hand, editors can't get much respect even from their writers, including a few authors with whom I've worked.  Vladimir Nabokov  sneered at them as ‘pompous avuncular brutes.’  Robert Gottlieb edited books of  Joseph Heller ,  John Le Carré ,  John Cheever , and  Toni Morrison . The legendary Maxwell Perkins  edited and famously mentored Lost Generation icons F. Scott Fitzgerald ...

UT ponders process at AWM Six years in Chicago and I no longer feel like a tourist. Still, I like it when visitors come and give me an excuse to rubberneck the Windy City's attractions. I doubt this will wear off. I lived in San Francisco for 30 years and never tired of taking friends and family around, always discovering something new. I was ready for another round this July when my eldest daughter, Alicia and her husband Brian paid my inamorata Eleanor and I a visit, as they do from time to time. They were on their way home to Mexico City, where they run American and English literature programs at an international school, having done that sort of thing on four continents. They had just spent fortnight in Ireland visiting Brian's mother. Right off, Brian, an author and musician as well, announced in his lyrical Irish brogue: "I must see your Writers' Museum." "Writers' museum?" I hesitated. "I didn't know we had one." In fac...