Tying Things Off

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Didion said she overlooked one thread of many. Like the loose threads that must be taken care of when one sews a garment or weaves fabric, numerous places in the text need small changes. Her story suggests that such small-scale revising is rather limited and undemanding—merely a “tying off” and “clipping” of bits that are loose and unattractive. But the impression that such revisions may be minor is belied by a related image—the image of tying up knots—that Nelson Algren uses to describe what he does during final revisions.

While I’m finishing a book it’s a bit like tying a lot of knots that keep slipping and you’re just impatient to get it done. And then you have to go back in, in order to tie it up, and you find you just can’t tie it up at the end. You have to go all the way back in to tie it up. (1964, p. 324)

21

Like Didion, Algren implies that problems of revising are primarily technical difficulties: One must keep finding loose ends, tying off knots, returning when knots have “slipped” (when one’s revising is not enough, or when revising in other areas necessitates returning to sections one previously thought finished). But since the strings or ropes or threads that Algren is trying to knot go deep into the texture of the text, their tying seems important: If not adequately tied, they could unravel, leaving the parts of the constructed piece only loosely connected. And, we might conclude, the same danger may attend those who neglect loose threads on a newly sewn garment. Neglecting to take care of such small and last-minute concerns can lead one to produce a text that does not cohere, that “falls apart.” So it seems that to compare revising to completing a set of small activities may not be to suggest that it is of little import. Rather, such small activities may be of broad effect—they make the text, necessarily completed by word and phrase, into an integrated whole.