Oh, dear.
So The New York Times Book Review had Book of Numbers-author Joshua Cohen review Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's new non-fiction title, Notes on the Death of Culture -- an admittedly somewhat thankless task (Mario Vargas Llosa's Notes on the Death of Culture is as uplifting as the title suggests, The Globe and Mail titles its review ...); I have the book and haven't managed to bring myself to cover it yet .....
As the 'Editors' Note Appended' warning now found at the top of the review suggests, there are ... issues with the review. Vargas Llosa helpfully also wrote a letter to the editor, complaining about: "information about me that is both slanderous and perfidious", and noting, nicely indignantly:
Not a shining moment for The New York Times Book Review -- but fact checking is something that's presumably easy/tempting to skimp on. I think the fact that they couldn't even spell the poor lady's name right -- see the first correction, because there were several ... ---, something even one of their kids could/should have checked on the Internet, is even more damning .....
This one is going to be tough to live down, all around .....
So The New York Times Book Review had Book of Numbers-author Joshua Cohen review Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa's new non-fiction title, Notes on the Death of Culture -- an admittedly somewhat thankless task (Mario Vargas Llosa's Notes on the Death of Culture is as uplifting as the title suggests, The Globe and Mail titles its review ...); I have the book and haven't managed to bring myself to cover it yet .....
As the 'Editors' Note Appended' warning now found at the top of the review suggests, there are ... issues with the review. Vargas Llosa helpfully also wrote a letter to the editor, complaining about: "information about me that is both slanderous and perfidious", and noting, nicely indignantly:
I am flabbergasted to learn that this kind of gossip can work its way into a respectable publication such as the Book Review.The New York Times Book Review helpfully explains both that the text has now been altered and that:
editors determined that the reviewer had based his account of these matters mostly on information from an article about Vargas Llosa in The Daily Mail, but neither the reviewer nor editors independently verified those statements. Using such information is at odds with The Times's journalistic standards, and it should not have been included in the review.Interestingly, that Daily Mail article still stands -- with the offending claims unchanged (unlike the NYTBR piece ...), despite the stricter British libel laws. And I can't find a letter to their editor from Vargas Llosa .....
Not a shining moment for The New York Times Book Review -- but fact checking is something that's presumably easy/tempting to skimp on. I think the fact that they couldn't even spell the poor lady's name right -- see the first correction, because there were several ... ---, something even one of their kids could/should have checked on the Internet, is even more damning .....
This one is going to be tough to live down, all around .....