That Old Master Painter From the Faraway Hills?

A difficult bit of editing/rewriting. Here is how the script came in. Both Detroit writer Mark Durfee and I agreed that it was inchoate, that is to say, really undeveloped writing:

 "Yesterday, on a day when she was particularly beautiful, a Montreal woman, the fervor of her spectacularly vivid eyes outlined in eyeliner by God, held me spellbound when she told me there was more to feminine beauty than a fabulous look. To me, reaching maturity in the world’s greatest newsroom, I thought I ought by now to be immune to explosions of great beauty. In the world of beautiful women one could see such women every day: at fashion press conferences, in the great hotels, in the magazines, on the Internet, possibly even across from you at breakfast. By now, I thought, beautiful women ought to be as natural to the male eye as sex. But then, to me, women are never just natural. They happen to be a phenomenon."

Here is how I rewrote the first paragraph, hoping to place powerfully felt emotions, at least the writer's emotions as I sensed them, on the printed page, trying for elegance and tact.

"Rebecca appears before you through the steam while you are rolling around in your old mahogany- supported porcelain bathtub, the kind with brass claws attached, filled almost to the top. A a feeling of warmth and fuzziness. Images of Rebecca. Rebecca, her 1920's Vogue face, the bobbed hair, a Drew Barrymore fallen into the rye one September day, swallowed, almost drowned like you in the warm comfort of your antique bathtub...(  Writer Alfred Warkertin: Don't take offence. Says old writer Norman Podhoretz that after executing good writing, you almost want to go off and masturbate. Says a pal, Yeah. It shows in some of Podhoretz' writing. Maybe it's showing in my attempt at editing. :)