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You are here: Home / Writing / Doris Duke Moves into the Limelight

Doris Duke Moves into the Limelight

July 30th, 2015 by Sallie Bingham in Writing 2 Comments

From the series: Doris Duke

Find out more about my book, The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke, now available in paperback.

Doris Duke Moves Into The LimelightThis is a slightly—only slightly—deceptive headline, since really my biography of Doris Duke is moving not so much into the limelight (more on that later) as into the searchlight of the editing process. Several weeks ago I sent my final, fourth draft of the biography to my esteemed editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and she began to shine the searchlight of the editing profess on it.

As a result, I am now reading, and occasionally wrestling with, what might be call the collision—or the creative cooperation—of two minds, essentially different: the mind of the writer and the mind of the editor. The mind of the editor is precise, honed by knowledge of what the reading public expects, while the mind of the writer is allusive, if not elusive, given to making connections and comparisons that may be more illuminating of general themes than exact in terms of time and place.

The page shown here gives a notion of the care my editor is giving to my biography; she has great skill at finding shorter and better ways of stating a fact, and some tolerance for my at times fanciful and even poetic way of writing, although “twinkling” handles on the drawers of Doris Duke’s steamer trunk proved to be a little too much for her.

And, I must admit, fancifulness is not often appropriate to the complex life story of a woman whose name crops up so frequently, even now three decades after her death. Yesterday, a review of a dance company performing at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Western Massachusetts mentioned that the dancers are dancing in the Doris Duke Theater, and I remember her passion for modern dance and her self-discipline when she was taking Martha Graham’s classes in New York. I wonder, by the by, how many people in the audience at Jacob’s Pillow wonder who Doris Duke was or why she left so much money to support modern dance—and whether, by any slim chance, there is a biographical note in the program.

I am now reading, and occasionally wrestling with, what might be call the collision—or the creative cooperation—of two minds, essentially different: the mind of the writer and the mind of the editor.

Unlikely.

There is a certain rightness in detaching the name of the donor from the gift, as time passes, although because Doris Duke was often maligned during her lifetime, the association of her name with the well-respected Jacob’s Pillow program is one of the first steps toward recreating her reality, with all its complexities, which is what my biography is doing.

So on with the editing process as I fight my natural impatience and my rebel-girl resistance to being corrected. I read recently that Winston Churchill, also at times short tempered, said that he loved to learn—but hated to be taught.

Well, I am being taught.

[For more on Doris Duke and dancing, please read “Doris Duke and Me: Dancing“]

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In Writing dancing Doris Duke The Silver Swan

A long and fruitful career as a writer began in 1960 with the publication of Sallie Bingham's novel, After Such Knowledge. This was followed by 15 collections of short stories in addition to novels, memoirs and plays, as well as the 2020 biography The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke.

Her latest book, Taken by the Shawnee, is a work of historical fiction published by Turtle Point Press in June of 2024. Her previous memoir, Little Brother, was published by Sarabande Books in 2022. Her short story, "What I Learned From Fat Annie" won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize in 2023 and the story "How Daddy Lost His Ear," from her forthcoming short story collection How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories (September 23, 2025), received second prize in the 2023 Sean O’Faolain Short Story Competition.

She is an active and involved feminist, working for women’s empowerment, who founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which gives grants to Kentucky artists and writers who are feminists, The Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, and the Women’s Project and Productions in New York City. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sallie's complete biography is available here.

Comments

  1. Bonnie Lee Black on Facebook says

    July 30th, 2015 at 8:46 am

    Imagine the collisions inside the mind of someone who is both a writer and editor! 🙂

    Reply
  2. Carol Johnson says

    July 30th, 2015 at 12:02 pm

    It’s maddening when an editor begins to pick apart a sentence you thought had such rhythm and flow, filled with pearls of prose, and they draw a big line across all of it…….and change it to 3 succinct words.

    Reply

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