Three-Ring Circus:
New Printing of The Cheerleader
May 10, 2012
I remember that when my father gave us a new edition of his 50 Hikes in the White Mountains, he inscribed it, “For Ruthie and Don—Old and new wine in a new bottle. Love, Dan.”
During the past year, Marney Wilde and I have been working on not a new edition of The Cheerleader for Frigate Books but the fifth printing. Although it’s a printing, not an edition, in its way it too is old and new wine in a new bottle. With this printing, the novel has entered the twenty-first century; it is the first printing to be digitized.
When the first trade paperback reprint was done by Frigate Books in 1998, the original 1973 hardcover copy was photocopied and new front matter was added, with a page of book-review quotes and an updated list of my books. A year later, in the second printing, Ann Norton’s foreword was added. Subsequent printings were made from the second printing.
Until now!
As you know, Marney is the Web master of this site. She is also a book designer, having designed the texts of The Snowy Series for Frigate Books starting with Henrietta Snow. When she began digitizing The Cheerleader, her goal was to retain the look of the original hardcover, but this was a challenge because fashions in type fonts have changed since the 1970s. I wasn’t worried, because I know that Marney can accomplish anything, and she has succeeded beautifully.
Ever since Marney created this site, Jan Schor and Jen Davis-Kay have been part of it as the trivia authors as well as providing other assistance. Now, in honor of the new printing, Jan wrote a new trivia quiz. And she cheered us on from her home in Israel.
And Jen, a freelance copy editor, asked if she could help. Yes! How wonderful to have Jen’s sharp eyes checking the pages! Thus, besides being a Web master, Marney became a ringmaster, handling our three-way copyediting conversation as we worked on the book—Marney in California, Jen in Massachusetts, me in New Hampshire. We called this our three-ring circus.
We conferred about the outside of the book too. In 1998 the cover had been copied from the dust jacket of the original hardback, and Frigate’s distributor had suggested adding this teaser: “What was it like before the Sex Revolution? A bittersweet best-seller about lost innocence.” We decided to remove these lines. As Marney pointed out, “I doubt that readers under fifty ever heard of the Sexual Revolution; that kind of freedom has always been theirs if family and/or local custom and traditions didn’t dictate otherwise.” Dick Hannus, who has designed The Snowy Series covers starting with Snowy, accomplished miracles recreating the cover, freshening up the green while keeping the original look.
Old and new wine in a new bottle. This was part of the copyediting work as well—spelling, usage, grammar, etc.; we updated some things while keeping most the way they were. When Marney and Jen and I found ourselves shooting e-mails back and forth discussing various utterly absorbing (to us) questions, such as the changing styles in “a” or “an” before pronounced “h’s” and italicizing the city in a newspaper’s title and should we stick to one “p” in “hiccuped,” we recognized that we were indeed copyediting nerds.
I had been tickled to read in Publishers Weekly that Diana Gabaldon had written in her Scottish Prisoner acknowledgments: “To the delightful copy editor, Kathy Lord, who knows ‘how many esses there are in nonplussed’ and who repeatedly saves my bacon by knowing how old everybody is and how far it is from Point A to Point B . . . ” Oh yes, saving one’s bacon! Jen’s sharp eyes and mind caught a mix-up that in 1973 had escaped my editor and copy editor, not to mention me. It occurs when the kids return to Puddles’s house after the post-junior-prom party at the camp on the lake. Jen wrote us, “Dear ones, I have a question about something that happens on p. 174. Tom pulls in behind Mike in the driveway at Puddles’s house, and then Mike leaves on p. 175—but Tom doesn’t move his car. How does Mike get out? (Other than: He slinks away in shame. Jerk.)” EEK!!! I hastily did a little rewriting, at Jen’s suggestion having Tom park in the street.
We couldn’t add an acknowledgments page to The Cheerleader because the number of pages had to remain at 288. But Henrietta Snow is dedicated to Marney and Jan and Jen, and to that I here add my gratitude for all this work and all this fun.
