They Could Always Change the Title to Making Book

Page Six gets all literary again, in furtherance of one of its favorite goals: making fun of NYT personnel. Seems former food critic Mimi Sheraton put a memoir out a few months ago called Eating My Words, and Oxford University Press is about to release a dictionary of food terms edited by another former food critic, William Grimes, called Eating Your Words. So she wrote him an email:

"It is hard to imagine why you would use such a title within four months of the publication of mine, and daunting to think of the confusion in the bookstore. [Oxford publicity director] Sara Leopold told me about it, indicating she thought it trivial and a funny coincidence, but that she would see what she could do about changing it. I don't think it is funny at all."

Grimes, who restrains himself from pointing out that nobody owns book titles, simply points out that he was offered the package as a pre-arranged deal and that the publisher gave the book the title it has without his input. (He also politely refrains from mentioning that this decision was likely made more than four months ago and probably had little if anything to do with Mimi Sheraton.) But that doesn't cut much ice with Sheraton, who still wants the title changed. "I think their behavior is unethical and lousy," she tells the Post.

Speaking of unethical and lousy behavior, Richard Johnson, don't you think it would have been ethical to point out that Sheraton's publisher, HarperCollins, is part of the same congolomerate that cuts your paycheck every week? Or does the Post still feel it doesn't have the same obligations it likes to dictate to other media outlets?