May 8, 2007
Where Are the Italian Girls? Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 03:15 PM EST A few weeks back, when the outside world was distracted by the Yankees’ pitching problems, this blog held a very interesting symposium on Andrew Roberts’s latest book, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. What made the discussion so noteworthy was not the comments themselves; most of the debate consisted of quoting other critics and then saying, in effect, “What he said.” It wasn’t the level of invective, which was rather mild by American Heritage Blog standards, nor even the unexpected absence of Josh Zeitz, who usually has an opinion on everything but was probably busy promoting his forthcoming book, White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics, and the Shaping of Postwar Politics. The most fascinating thing about our debate over Roberts’s book can be seen in these excerpts: Fred Smoler: “I looked over a very few pages of a draft of a portion of his book, but I have not read the book . . .” Alexander Burns: “Not having read Roberts’s book, I won’t say that it’s worthless.” John Steele Gordon: “I haven’t read Roberts’s book either, so I’m in very good company.” I haven’t seen so many people discussing a book they haven't read since my Contemporary Civilization class in college. Yet that hasn’t stopped this blog’s contributors from taking sides pro and con, and while everyone paid lip service to the notion that it might be a good idea to actually read the book before deciding whether they like it, somehow, if they did all read it cover to cover, I doubt anyone would change his mind. As it happens, I haven’t read the book either. I do have a copy at home, but it has been sitting on my table for weeks, shunted aside in favor of a succession of novels (most recently Lucia in London, by E. F. Benson, since you asked). I was struck, however, in reading the odd mix of vehemence and hesitancy that characterized my fellow bloggers’ discussion, to see how great a role was accorded to trivia. The whole thing started after a captious New Republic reviewer made a detailed examination of the book’s 700-odd pages and found a number of mistakes, which he listed and then made the usual noises about how, while some may be minor, collectively they call into question the author’s trustworthiness, etc. That’s what proofreader/critics always say, and it may even be true, but by those standards, Ken Jennings would be the world’s greatest historian. As John Steele Gordon points out, much of the supposed decline in standards of accuracy is really a decline in the quality of proofreading and copyediting. I blame feminism for this. Decades ago, thousands of overqualified women spent their entire careers in low-ranking jobs in publishing because it was one of the few fields open to them. Now their daughters are off being genetic engineers and corporate executives and members of Congress, and the publishing industry—much more important, in my view—is greatly the poorer for it. I was reminded of all this last week, when I bestowed my coveted Dumb-Ass Right-Wing Commentator of the Week award on Tony Blankley of the Washington Times. (Mind you, I don’t have anything in particular against right-wing commentators; you might even say I’m one myself. I would willingly institute a similar award for left-wing commentators, except I don’t read them.) Anyway, my man Tony earned last week’s glittering prize, which entitles him to ride on the New York City subway for just $2, with the following passage: “But we all know that ‘hate speech’ is in the ear of the listener. In Europe, citizens can be—and have been—criminally prosecuted for calling elements of Islam violence-prone. The great crusading journalist Camille Paglia was forced to live out her last cancer-ridden days in exile to avoid paying the penal price for her honest (and accurate) expressions on that topic.” Camille Paglia is still alive, though you would hardly notice, since she has virtually disappeared from view after being overtaken in the outrageousness derby by today’s crop of Ann Coulter types. Mr. Blankley means Oriana Fallaci, of course, and this is another example of the poverty of the “gotcha” school of criticism. If Mr. Blankley had made the same statement in conversation, he would have noticed the puzzled looks on his listeners’ faces and said, “Oh, wait, not Camille Paglia—who do I mean?” Then someone would have corrected him, and he would have said thank you and gone ahead with his point. Mistakes of this type are like having your fly open—embarrassing, but they have nothing to do with whether you’re right or wrong. Maybe the reason I’m so peevish about this is that I just got a letter about my April “Time Machine” column on the Black Hawk War, declaring with exasperation that “Black Hawk was not chief of the Sauk people, pure and simple.” In fact, I called him “a chief,” and according to my sources, he was indeed a war chief, though not a hereditary chief. So there! This is the sort of mistake that letter writers always describe as a “glaring error.” Readers love to pounce on these, as if they invalidated everything the writer had ever spoken or thought. In fact, there are self-appointed fact checkers who specialize in certain specific corrections, firing off sarcastic letters whenever they see their favorite mistake. The more active members of this bunch are known in the publishing industry with nicknames like Big Apple Guy (who explains that the term “Big Apple” did not originate among Harlem jazz musicians in the 1930s but with a racing writer in the 1920s) or Hot Dog Guy (who shows that the story about hot dogs being named by the cartoonist Tad Dorgan after a 1901 baseball game is as bogus as it sounds). These people like to save all their clippings and show them off to journalists, or anyone else who will sit still for it. I suppose there are worse hobbies to have. Then of course there are those who spend their lives correcting fake errors, like the supposedly “wrong” period in Harry S. Truman’s middle name, on which see this. The other day I found a similarly “glaring” and trivial mistake in an excellent book whose author I will soon interview for this blog: Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman, by Lee Lowenfish. Early in the book, Lowenfish says that in 1908 William Howard Taft defeated Alton Parker for the Presidency. In fact, as everyone knows, he defeated William Jennings Bryan, making the Middle-Aged Boy Orator of the Platte a three-time loser. Parker ran against Teddy Roosevelt in 1904, when TR was so popular that Bryan realized he didn’t have a chance. I knew this without having to look it up (no, really, I did), and I would very much like to become known as Alton Parker Guy, but it’s hard to make a living that way. The last word on the subject, I think, can be found in this trenchant analysis of academic vs. popular history, which makes some worthwhile remarks despite the author’s unfortunate attempt to imitate my writing style. Academic historians are meticulous about accuracy on even the slightest points, as they should be. Popular historians, like the writers and editors of American Heritage, also strive to be as accurate as possible, which is why every one of our articles is fact-checked. Still, given the constraints under which we operate, a few errors inevitably slip past us from time to time, and as you can see by reading the magazine’s letters column, our readers are quite generous about pointing them out. Yet the main argument of a book or article is not invalidated by a few misspellings or inaccurate dates; after all, the contributors to this blog correct each other all the time. That’s why I think A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 is a hell of a book despite its inaccuracies—and if I ever get around to reading it, I’ll be sure to tell you why.
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