Stranger in a Strange Land

Remembering Carol Thiessen

John Wilson | posted 7/01/2003

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Did you feel your blood pressure rising when Adam Gopnik's New Yorker piece on The Matrix Reloaded, citing influences, referred to Philip K. Dick's novel, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Erdrich? (It's Eldritch, of course—and whatever happened to the fanatical fact-checkers?) Do you sense a fit of apoplexy coming on when you encounter a run-on sentence in The New York Times? Do you have to restrain yourself from interrupting a dinner conversation to explain the distinction between disinterested and uninterested? If you answered yes to all three, you have the makings of a copyeditor. You don't think that such matters are the province of pedantry; you care about getting things right.

In more than 20 years in publishing—including a long stint doing reference books, where the demands of accuracy are especially stringent—I have been fortunate enough to work with several outstanding copyeditors. But the best of them all was Carol Thiessen, who reigned as Christianity Today's "Style Czarina" (as my friend and former colleague, Mickey Maudlin, wrote in a tribute) from April 1979 until her retirement in the fall of 1999, and who also served as the copyeditor of Books & Culture from its debut in 1995 to the issue of November/December 1999, though doing so meant an increase in her already heavy workload. Carol is on my mind because word just came of her death from liver cancer, on May 27, near her retirement home in Florida.

Carol was much more than a copyeditor at CT. Her official title was "administrative editor," which hinted at her relentless determination to keep the magazine on schedule—a job not made easier by writers and editors whose awareness of deadlines was less visceral than hers. She was in charge of the Letters section, which she managed with a keen sense of fairness, and she was very much involved in CT's coverage of the arts. (The radio in her office was tuned to a classical station—for many years she led the orchestra at her church, and her knowledge of music was wide and deep.) She was also the historian of the CT hallway, able to recount tales from earlier eras in the magazine's life. But above all she was a superb copyeditor of the old school, vigilant against errors of style and errors of fact, with an uncanny ability to spot a typo.

Like many of her tribe—improbably combining the virtues of a Marine drill sergeant with an encyclopedic knowledge of the intricacies of English grammar and usage—Carol was a woman of strong opinions, and we clashed now and then. She was a formidable personality altogether, and when I think of her, what I see is a series of expressions on her exceedingly expressive face.

First is a look of exasperation, probably provoked by the non-arrival of pieces due to be copyedited or proofed or out the door. As keeper of the master schedule, with a never-ending series of issue plans to attend to, Carol could rarely afford to relax. Some editors met their deadlines solely because they were afraid to face Carol if they were late. (Result? "Under Carol's watch," Mickey Maudlin recalled, "we never missed our date with the printer.")

Next would be an explosive laugh. If the stereotypical Grammarian is a humorless type, viewing the world through perpetually pursed lips, Carol didn't fit the part. She had a robust sense of humor and—closely allied—an acute distaste for phoniness and pretension. Her own faith was as solid as it could be, the rock of her existence, but she didn't favor the sort of gushing piety all too common in evangelical circles.

And then a look of uncommon tenderness: a sure sign that Carol was talking about her cats. She doted on them, and on cathood generally—which struck me, a catlover too, as perfectly reasonable.

We talked several times about making a trip to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs, but it never happened. We traded information about book sales in the area. Mostly we worked together to get an issue done, and then the next, and then another. (I'm sure if she took her pen to this issue, she'd find something to correct.) Without her expert eye and tireless dedication, B&C would never have been well launched. Thank you, Carol.

—John Wilson

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