The delicate author-editor relationship as seen in The Insect Dialogues, reviewed.

This effacement of the real work of the editor contributes to the confusion, no doubt, and makes it much harder to assess the quality of the work of any one editor. There are, of course, a few famous stories of editors' impact on great works: Pound's editing of Eliot's The Waste Land, Mary Shelley's husband's work on Frankenstein, and, more recently, Gordon Lish's heavy hand on Raymond Carver's work. Carver would later write to Lish, "If I have any standing or reputation or credibility in the world, I owe it to you." (Stephen King, speaking for the writers, disagreed, calling Lish's edits on "If It Please You" a "total rewrite, and ... a cheat.") So The Insect Dialogues has the effect of pulling back the curtain on the work of rewriting and unveiling the collaboration and dispute that transforms a first draft into a published work.