Typos and editorial errors

I've come to accept that books published in the last decade or two, both in print format and as ebooks, will have typos in them. It's not entirely surprising with ebooks, since the transition from print to digital seems fraught with typo-traps, and there doesn't appear to be the same amount of time given to the publishing of ebooks that's usually given to print versions. You expect more of print titles, I think, but even these nowadays seem to have more typos in them that I've seen in books published in earlier decades. Even books published in the distant past, such as the 19th century, rarely have typos.

I've just finished reading Elly Griffiths' second Ruth Galloway murder mystery, The Janus Stone, on Kindle. It's a good read, the characters are well-drawn, and the mystery has enough red-herrings in it to keep from guessing what's up until well near the end. However, there were a number of typos in it - mostly words missing from sentences - as well as formatting issues, where there were paragraphs that proved to be unnecessary to the material in hand.

Many years ago I read a fascinating book on the man who edited most of F Scott Fitzgerald's books. This was Maxwell Perkins, a man also credited with getting Hemingway published as well as bringing Thomas Wolfe's books into a readable form. The book about him was, I think, Max Perkins: editor of genius by A Scott Berg.

Perkins didn't just take the manuscript and publish it, he assisted the authors to clarify details, tighten structure, make good decisions about changing things for the betterment of the book, and much more. He was more like a patron than an editor.

I mention Perkins because he's always seemed to me to be the epitome of a good editor: a man who could see faults in the overall book that eluded the writer himself, but also a man who would nit-pick and refuse to let anything faulty go by. He and Fitzgerald had some serious arguments about the latter's work.

By contrast, the editor of The Janus Stone - Jane Wood - should have picked up one major error, which I presume is also in the print form.

One of the characters, a Catholic priest called Hennessey, says, "What about the Holy Ghost? The most important one of the trilogy as far as I'm concerned." This statement is repeated a second time later in the book, when Ruth Galloway remembers him saying it.

I thought at first it was a clue that Hennessey wasn't who he said he was. No Catholic priest - indeed no minister of any Christian denomination - would ever call the Trinity the 'trilogy.' Quite apart from the fact that a trilogy relates to a series of three things, usually of books, but occasionally of other art forms.

Hennessey,however, is definitely a priest, and therefore is hardly likely to use the wrong word in this instance.

I know from my own experience of publishing ebooks just how hard it is to pick up every error - missing words are far more common than misspellings. But errors relating to well-known information should be picked up long before the book goes out into the world.

Galloway, as a character, is very prone to dismissing anything to do with religion. But surely Griffiths, although she has some wry things to say about Christianity in the course of this book, isn't so opposed to religion that she would put something so completely wrong in the mouth of one of her Christian characters.

Bring back Max Perkins and his ilk, I say!

Housewife, 49

A couple of days ago TVNZ aired a TV movie called, Housewife, 49. It was written by Victoria Wood, who also plays the main character, Mrs Last, the housewife of the title, aged 49 at the time the story begins. Mrs Last is on the verge on another breakdown at the same time as England is on the verge of the Second World War. Her somewhat off-hand doctor recommends getting some friends (with the assumption that this is easy to do); in fact, what Mrs Last needs is a purpose in life, something to bring out her real and lively nature. Her two sons have grown up and are moving on, her husband continues to dominate the household by expecting everything to revolve around him - even though he's a person with almost no personality and no other interests in life except his joinery business. It all seems very bleak, and then Mrs Last joins the Women's Voluntary Service, who truly come into their own in the course of the war.

Things aren't all plain sailing from then on; her favourite son, Cliff, decides that he's acting as a coward by not fighting in the war (as opposed to being an army PT instructor) and ultimately he turns against her when she continues to mother him in the way she's always done. (He also turns out to be gay, something which of course he finds difficult to reveal.) She runs up against some strong-minded (and class-minded) women in the WVS, and more than once retires, battered and bruised. Her husband opposes her every move and it's only her sense that she's doing the right thing - not just for the war effort, but for herself - that keeps her going and eventually shows her that he's the weaker partner in the marriage.

There's a lot more subtlety in it than that brief synopsis allows, and Wood has provided a script full of great lines for her various characters to deliver, particularly Mrs Waite (played by Stephanie Cole) who never says anything without using the English language to its fullest extent. David Threlfall, as Mr Last, maintains a dour aspect throughout, and puts a damper on the slightest show of life in his household; yet he has moments in which we can sympathise with him. It's a superb performance, showing how even the most drear person has humanity and uniquness.

Throughout the story, Mrs Last writes a kind of diary, in pencil and on scrap paper, and sends this off as part of an initiative called the Mass Observation Project. Their Archive site notes: The Archive results from the work of the social research organisation, Mass Observation. This organisation was founded in 1937 by three young men, who aimed to create an 'anthropology of ourselves'. They recruited a team of observers and a panel of volunteer writers to study the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain. This original work continued until the early 1950s.

There were two aspects to the Project: one consisted of observers going to all manner of organisations and taking notes, the other was called The National Panel of Diarists and was composed of people from all over Britain who either kept diaries or replied to regular open-ended questionnaires sent to them by the central team of Mass-Observers.

This latter is where Mrs Last's (true) story fits in. Her notes are kept faithfully by the Project team (along with thousands of others) and her sometimes heart-rending story is seen as a kind of serial in their day to day work. The original Project came to an end in the 1950s, but was revived via the Archive in 1981, and continues to this day with a wide range of writers still contributing to it.

Jesus still loves me...

This version of “Jesus Loves Me” is from Margaret Wood, and turned up in the Rumors newsletter. It's for those oldies out there who think their time has come!

Jesus loves me, this I know,
Though my hair is white as snow.
Though my sight is growing dim,
Still He bids me trust in Him.
(CHORUS)
Yes, Jesus loves me (3X)
The Bible tells me so.

Though my steps are oh, so slow,
With my hand in His I'll go.
On through life, let come what may,
He'll be there to lead the way.
(CHORUS)

Though I am no longer young,
I have much which He's begun.
Let me serve Christ with a smile,
Let me go the extra mile.
(CHORUS)

When the nights are dark and long,
In my heart He puts a song.
Telling me in words so clear,
'Have no fear, for I am near.'
(CHORUS)

Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare

I finished Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare in a few days; it’s an easy read, and, like the best of Bryson, tells some good stories.
But it seems to take as its starting point the ‘fact’ that we know almost nothing about Shakespeare, and consequently, Bryson has nothing to tell. He does tell us about Shakespeare’s world, about some of his plays, about his theatres, about his contemporaries, but by claiming throughout that we know almost nothing about Shakespeare himself, Shakespeare comes out of the book like some sort of shadow or ghost.
It’s disappointing. A couple of years ago I read In Search of Shakespeare by Michael Wood. From that book I gleaned a remarkable amount about Shakespeare. Now Bryson says that no one knows enough to tell us anything, which is all rather a let down. He quotes lots of people who claim to know everything, but who are more speculators than fact-mongers.
The interesting thing is that he doesn’t include Wood in his reasonably extensive bibliography, even though Wood’s book was certainly around by the time Bryson wrote his book. Furthermore, Wood’s book was a companion (a very good companion) to a tv series.
I’m not alone in thinking that Bryson’s book is a bit of a fizzer. Check out Patricia Maunder’s review.