None of the three endings—nor that of Middlemarch, quoted earlier—provides prizes, pensions, or cheerful remarks, and with each one might interject, “But what happens next?” Perhaps Catherine and Heathcliff will roam the heath as ghosts evermore. Yet there is a note of resolution, of a journey completed that leaves us saddened, perhaps, but

overwriting (to my ear, at least).

Maybe Hemingway should have taken Fitzgerald’s advice, or settled for one of his own earlier versions. But his choice underlines a general temptation: to seek out some grand statement or Humpty-Dumptyish knock-down argument or sentences intended to wrench your heart, and the result is

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh. “Revision” is most powerfully and precisely a fresh vision, a new way of seeing what you have done and what you intend: re-vision.

essays Ten Years in the Tub: A Decade Soaking in Great Books

Batuman declared: I would greatly prefer to think of literature as a profession, an art, a science, or pretty much anything else, rather than a craft. What did craft ever try to say about the world, the human condition, or the search for meaning? All it had were its negative dictates: “Show, don’t tell”; “Murder your darlings”; “Omit needless

(a) Trust a few, necessary voices; (b) Try, as much as possible, to avoid torturing these brave souls with your insecurities; and (c) Shut up and write.

a sitting.

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition” and “The Poetic Principle,” both of which advocate short chapters, such that a reader can complete one chapter (or structural unit) in