[LMB] OT: When Favourite Authors Screw Up

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Elizabeth Holden" <azurite at rogers.com>


> This is not exactly a case of the author herself screwing up (unless 
> possibly in the
> proofreading), but in one of my favourite books, Karin Lowachee's 
> "Cagebird", there's a line that
> is totally mangled - I don't remember now if it's transposed words or 
> missing words or both, but
> the actual line came out as nonsensical.
>
> Well, this happens.  Shouldn't be a big deal, right?
>
> Except it happens to be the pivotal line in the most significant turning 
> point of the whole book.
>
> You can figure out from context what happened, but you shouldn't have to. 
> Such a powerful moment
> shouldn't be a moment of confusion.

a) The character in Cagebird is rather mangled, though.
b)  It's also possible that the line got mangled in the production process, 
copyeditors and editorial editing are responsble for a lot book mangling 
(they're supposed to be helping, not hurting... there are authors who have 
gone through copyedited manuscripts and written or stamped "STET" on every 
page, due to bad copy edits.... )

> Likewise there's a missing line in the original paperback publication of 
> Dorothy Dunnett's "The
> Game of Kings".  The line itself isn't especially significant but it 
> throws off the sense of a
> very intense, important scene about whether the hero will or will not kill 
> himself.
>
> I can't imagine caring about a failure of arithmetic (as with Anne 
> McCaffrey) or fact - but this
> kind of publication carelessness bothers me because it really shouldn't 
> happen.  Authors shouldn't
> get facts wrong, either - but there's a balance of quality of writing (or 
> storytelling) and
> quality of material, and I'll forgive a lot for a well-written story.  For 
> instance: Jean
> Anouilh's play and movie "Becket" is historical nonsense - most of it 
> total fiction. The main
> theme is that Becket was a Saxon who betrayed his own people and regretted 
> it - but the real
> Becket wasn't a Saxon; he was from Rouen.  But frankly, I don't care. 
> Anouilh wrote an excellent
> story about a personal moral dilemma. Call it alternate history.

Anhoilh wrong a preface explaining that he took a version of the story as 
being true, to use as the basis of his play, and later found out, that it 
wasn't accurate.

> I do care about many types of errors when it comes to history, though! 
> Such errors are usually
> about culture or viewpoint - I wouldn't care if, say, a set of dates were 
> wrong or fudged, but to
> have 12th century people acting with 20th century viewpoints will make me 
> put a book down. Or,
> worse - and much more common - to have 12th century people acting like 
> 18th century people because
> most of the medieval myths we have now came from the Victorians.