What's in a byline?

One of the differences between being a history student and being a historian is that the historian does not really have the luxury of being able to take anything for granted. Generally, the history student is expected to read a general textbook, memorize the who, what, where, when and how of it and then (maybe) come up with the why. By contrast, historians have to get their hands dirty; in the field of history, the historian has to be wary of forgeries, poor copies, errors of memory, malicious altering of truth, etc. These are the big glaring booby-traps of history; they are among the highly visible adversaries of truth. There are much more subtle dangers, not the least of which is the opacity of the byline.

My friends who are not history majors will tell me that no one, other than other history majors, really cares. My impression is that how much one cares about this issue is heavily tied to how much one cares about Truth. Still, for the benefit of those who really couldn't care less about history, I will proceed with an example from another field.

In 1890, Oscar Wilde published "The Picture of Dorian Gray" in serial form; the following year a revised edition was published as a novel. The endnotes in my Penguin Classics copy of Dorian Gray, have a nice habit of occasionally pointing out differences between the manuscript and the different printed editions. More useful still, the book often points out whether it was Wilde or his editor who made the changes. Very often these changes have the effect of diluting the book's homoeroticism, which unfortunately didn't do much to keep Wilde from being sentenced to two years of hard labor for "acts of gross indecency." At the most meaningless level, knowing what was changed is really interesting: some gorgeous passages were taken out. More significantly, the deleted text often sheds light on the intentions of the characters, and even on the character of the author.

The problem is that when I pick up an "unabridged" copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, I expect to find Oscar Wilde is writing on the page. Without turning to the endnotes, I'd have no way of knowing that what I'm reading isn't pure essence of Wilde, but rather essence of Wilde diluted with self-censorship and a pinch of extract of editor. Most texts which come to us through an editor's filter don't come with such handy notes. Normally one's book needs to be considered a classic for that sort of a treatment, and since Microsoft Word doesn't leave a paper trail, it's quite possible that I'm dealing with an endangered species of information. All of this leaves us with a strikingly misleading byline.

If this sounds sinister, I must clarify that it isn't, at least not always. Truth be told, what you're reading isn't the first draft. The original version meandered into its point, and somewhere along the publication process one of my editors realized that the article could be better. It was a good call. Sometimes it is; sometimes it isn't; sometimes it is, but the author really wishes it weren't.

This particular byline has my name on it, and if it weren't for the particular nature of this column, most people would simply assume that the words on the page are completely mine. As I sit here (re)typing this, I have no way of knowing just what the editors will do to this article. It probably won't be worth the effort to go about telling people what (if any) changes have been made to my text. The most anal of my readers will be left wondering.

By and large it probably won't matter tremendously what (if any) changes are made. It's unlikely that my words will be twisted to say something I really didn't mean. In any case, this is a fairly theoretical work about a really subtle point, which really bears little impact on your day-today reality, unless you are a historian or want to drive yourself insane. (I am guilty on both counts.)

The problem remains, however, that if authors want their pieces to see the light of day, they will have to concede to the editors on some points, and the reader has no way of knowing which points those were. All that remains at the end of the process is an opaque byline and a text. Martha Vega-Gonzalez is a history major from New York, NY. She can be reached at mvega@princeton.edu.