Ann Patchett Regrets the Error
A friend sent me a link to the Atlantic letter column, where Ann Patchett apologizes to a Clemson undergrad for misquoting her in an article about how Truth and Beauty sparked protests on campus. What Amanda See had told the campus newspaper about her reaction to Patchett’s memoir, which recounts her friendship with Lucy Grealy, is that “the love between the two women is not normal,” and Patchett read that as “the love between two women.” As See points out, this “changes the entire meaning of the quote from a specific reference to the unhealthy nature of the friendship between Patchett and Lucy Grealy portrayed in the book to a blanket statement against lesbianism.” And in her misreading, Patchett took that opportunity to argue that See “had finally come out and said the thing that no one else had the nerve to mention: Lucy and I must have been having sex with each other.”
All of which reminded me of one of my earliest blog entries, commenting on Janet Maslin’s review of the book, where I flat out asked, “What exactly is Maslin trying to suggest about Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy?” Because that review was exactly the sort of thing Patchett was talking about—dancing around the subject in coy, voyeuristic language.
(Now that she’s clear on what See really said, Patchett notes, “I am glad to know that See does not stand in judgment of lesbians, but I still find it troubling that she sees herself fit to publicly judge the normalcy of the deep love my friend Lucy Grealy and I shared.”)
7 September 2007 | uncategorized |
Publicists Slipping Bloggers Money? More Thoughts
Book designer Stephen Tiano, whose blog I just discovered over the weekend, has an interesting response to yesterday’s post about authors promoting themselves on blogs, specifically the passing reference in a NY Times article to “blog tour” promoters who said they’d paid bloggers to review their clients’ books, something I’d never seen verified and which I thought deserved further discussion.
“I was thinking the same thing about bloggers being paid for reviews when I read that,” Stephen emails. “For all the baseless whining by print writers about blogs that review books—and blogger journalism, in general—here’s a genuine issue that bears some discussion … at the very least. I mean, it does seem to strike right at the heart of the integrity of people doing such reviews. Or,
considering how many writers who are employees of newspapers and magazines, and also have signed contracts with book publishers, does it?”
Individual reviewers probably have their own solutions for that, if they even view it as a dilemma: One obvious solution would be to avoid reviewing books from the publisher with whom you have a contract. Any others come to mind?
3 September 2007 | uncategorized |
Our Endless and Proper Work is my new book with Belt Publishing about starting (and sticking to) a productive writing practice. 
