December 2000: Vol. 80, No. 1December 2000: Vol. 80, No. 1Being edited by the late Georgia Review editor was like visiting a soothsayer; Stan knew where the story was going even when the writer didn't
by Marjorie Sandor
he first time I met Stanley Lindberg—years before I sent him a story—was on a dark road at a writers' conference, and I don't mean that metaphorically. My roommate spotted him as he tried to cross to the safety of the faculty lounge unmolested. I admired her boldness as she stopped him. "Hi, you don't know me, but would you be willing to look at a story of mine?" I should explain that she was twenty-two, slender, with soft dark eyes; I had yet to see her refused. But Stan laughed—without cruelty, without mockery. "No," he said, "I'm afraid I wouldn't," and vanished into the dark.
I was—I am—relieved. I think I sent him my first story because he wouldn't say yes, on the dark road, to beauty. And it held true: he was forever saying the thing that would make you rethink everything—a comma or your ethics—then walking out of sight. Isn't that what a great editor does? Could a writer ever learn to listen as well as he did, and know when to walk away?
But he was also the editor who said Yes. Yes, to more unpublished writers than any other I know of. He was the first to walk us back through the nasty brambles of a first or third or thirteenth story, a country made habitable, made new, by his care. The first time he telephoned to edit, I knew from his questions that more than language would emerge transformed: he was teaching me how to work, how to be. I was, as I imagine other new writers to be, melodramatic and fastidious, afraid to get my hands dirty. Stan loved to laugh at me, and I learned from that, too: "You're comma-mad," he'd say. Or, "What is it with you and semicolons?" Then, the next second, "Argue with me. You don't have to agree with every change I suggest."
For a long time, he was purely a voice: of spicy wit, of fine patience, of subtleties and straight ruthless knowledge I'd never go after on my own. Editing by telephone with Stan was as rich and blinding as the surprise of a first draft; meanings lifted from their caves by a flip of a sentence, a word erased, a shift in rhythm. Then there was the deep stuff: some terrible question you hoped no one would ever ask. "Just think about it, and get back to me," he said, in that quiet voice. "You'll find a way."
At last, one April, I got to meet him—really meet him, and not on any dark road. This was at a conference in Atlanta, during a fiftieth anniversary reading for The Review. He used his breathing apparatus right up until the moment he stood before the big crowd. At the podium, he said nothing about himself: it was all about the writers. There was comedy, difficulty, pleasure, work. Nothing about himself, this man who'd made of himself a writer's way to be heard. Where else does literature come from? How can it come without him?
That was the last time I saw him. He telephoned not long after, to edit a story.
"Do you know who this is, calling? Can you still recognize my voice?"
I did. It was roughened, breathless, almost a whisper now, but still his. "Are you ready?" he said, and took me to task—what a good and right phrase that is—for the promiscuity of my commas and semicolons, for the paragraphs I'd hoped would slip past his notice, and the ones I had yet to write. Why on earth would I, would any writer, hope to miss that chance?
He had to pause now and then to breathe. But on he went, taking me with him back into the country I'd nearly forgotten, fought against knowing, never fully believed was there. None of this had altered in the least. His voice was fully there, and still is, making the living story rise up when the writer can't find it anywhere.