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Forum nameLouis L'Amour Discussion Forum
Topic subjectRE: Alert -- To the Far Blue Mounta
Topic URLhttp://louislamour.com/dcforum/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=221&topic_id=909&mesg_id=913
913, RE: Alert -- To the Far Blue Mounta
Posted by blamour, Thu Oct-22-20 03:04 AM
You can do it. My assumption is that we are seeing the difference between a first and second draft of an idea. Unfortunately they both got put into the same manuscript.

In the "original publication" the very rare drastically edited one that Dad objected to, the version of the story that Pim tells was omitted. In the scramble to put everything back after Dad complained about the editor (probably working for Saturday Review Press) cutting around 100 pages, the Pim version was put back in ... I'm guessing no one had the guts to go to Dad and say, "You were right, that editing job was out of control ... but here's a problem that needs fixing. To really do a good job fixing the Pim section Chapter 19 needs to be revised not just edited.

Whether Dad then got every detail correct when he wrote Fair Blows the Wind a year or two later is another open question. That manuscript ALSO suffered from aggressive editing but at least it was caught before any were printed. Again material was shuffled back into the book at the last minute.

That was the last time we had that sort of trouble. Bantam started publishing their own hardcovers and all the editorial work was kept in house and a new editor was hired, a young man named Irwyn Applebaum who became our dear friend. He eventually went to work elsewhere but returned to run Bantam as Publisher for 15 years or so from the 1990s to the early 2000s.

There definitely aren't two Tatton Chantry's who escape from Ireland to England in the same way. that would be much too confusing because there is already the "mysterious" first Tatton Chantry who's name our character uses. Unfortunately, I know as little about that as anyone. Nor do I know who "Tatton," (our Tatton) really was supposed to be. Irish nobility of some sort.