Nobody’s perfect
CBC.ca ran a story yesterday about the harsher side of media attention shortlisted books are subject to. According to the CBC story, “The Giller Prize nomination for Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game has generated huge buzz for the first-time novelist, but also shone a spotlight on typos in his book.”
The story goes on to identify particular errors in Hage’s book, and features a quote from Craig Silverman, editor of the website Regret the Error: “When somebody reads a book and they spot an error, whether it’s a misplaced apostrophe or whether it’s a typo, they’re naturally going to question, ‘OK, if they got this wrong, what else is wrong?’ “
Quillblog would like to point out two things. First, although Silverman’s website does track “media mistakes,” as the CBC story claims, it focuses largely on factual errors that run in newspapers and magazines, not typos in fiction.
Second, as Anansi publisher Lynn Henry notes, “If you read Canadian books … I think it’s very unusual to have a book that’s 100 per cent error-free.” Even prize-winning books from big publishers, like Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, are not free from grammatical glitches.
While Hage’s errors are the focus of the story, Lam’s get a brief postscript: “Critics have also pointed out grammatical errors in Lam’s Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures. Lam, like Hage, is a first-time novelist, although his book was published by the larger publishing house Doubleday Canada.”
Related links:
Read the CBC story here
Speaking of media mistakes, you’ve gotta love how an article that picks typo nits can wrap up by calling an author who has never published a novel a “first-time novelist”.