REWRITING AFTER IT’S DONE.
REWRITING AFTER IT’S DONE. Finishing a book can be hard. Terry Teachout writes here about authors who have second thoughts after a book is published (the essay is inspired by Arthur Laurents’s rewriting of the book of West Side Story over 50 years after it was first performed). Teachout cites the famous example of Auden’s rewriting the line “We must love one another or die.” to “We must love one another and die.” long after “September 1, 1939” was published. I agree with what, I think, is the majority that the Auden’s first version was better–if only because Auden’s poem derives some of its power from being written to preserve the thoughts of a particular day. Afterthoughts just don’t seem right.
As I observed 47 years ago, afterthoughts are still thoughts. But they are new thoughts that may not be as powerful as the original thoughts.