The kerfuffle of the week has been the news that an acclaimed new book, "The Last Train from Hiroshima" by Charles Pellegrino, had to be withdrawn by its publisher following the revelation that important details in it, including the testimony of a supposed eyewitness source, were apparently fabricated.
As happened in earlier cases of authors doctoring the truth, some readers have raised questions about "quality control" problems in publishing, and asked, don't publishers fact-check their products?
Well, no, actually. A major difference between book and magazine or newspaper publishing is that publishers don't have fact-checkers on staff, and never have. This is not, as some cynics might suppose, because book publishers don't care about accuracy as long as a book sells. It's partly because, unlike those media where advertisers support (or used to) a large editorial staff, book publishing has been a fear leaner enterprise (or as some would say, a cottage industry). But a more important reason, I believe, is that in book publishing, unlike journalism, the content has traditionally belonged to the author, not to the house.
This is reflected in book contracts, where copyright is typically retained by the author; more to the point, it's firmly established in publishing culture that you never make editorial changes without an author's consent. As an editor you may lean pretty hard on an author to make revisions you feel are necessary (Gordon Lish's interventions with Raymond Carver being the extreme example)--but ultimately, "the book belongs to the author," and to change it or not is his or her prerogative. With that prerogative goes, inevitably, a greater responsibility for the quality of what you write.
Now, any good publisher wants to produce the best books possible. While we don't have fact-checkers, we have copyeditors who go through manuscripts with a fine-tooth comb, after the editor has already worked with the author to get the book in shape. I have done my own fact-checking from time to time when an author's statement seemed questionable, and the best copyeditors will frequently check sources as well as spelling and punctuation. Furthermore, any manuscript that might raise issues such of defamation or privacy goes through a careful legal review. In the end, though, we have to trust our authors.
I don't take on a work of nonfiction, especially a controversial or even unconventional one, without satisfying myself, perhaps just at gut level, that the author is presenting the truth responsibly. But I have to recognize that I can be fooled. Reading about the case of Charles Pellegrino, who supposedly produced--or at least, said he had--documentation of his bogus souce (who was a real person, but apparently not present at the event he claimed to witness), I suspect I might well have accepted the author's account.
Once we have decided to trust an author, we usually give him or her the benefit of the doubt on matters of fact just as on matters of style or argument. Of course, this leaves us vulnerable. But in book publishers' defense, the impulse to trust the people you work with is a hard one to overcome. Look at the cases of Janet Cooke, Stephen Glass, or Jayson Blair, whose fabrications sailed through the presumably gimlet-eyed fact-checking operations of the Washington Post, New Republic, and New York Times respectively.
This is the Mouth of Truth, at the Church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, via Wikimedia Commons. It's said that if you tell a lie with your hand in the mouth of the sculpture, it will be bitten off. Maybe every publisher needs one of these?
Follow Peter Ginna on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bloomsburypress
Eric E. Burns: Fact Checking the Sunday Shows
Every Monday morning, the Media Matters Action Network will publish a memo correcting the conservative misinformation that was left unchallenged the day before.
Greg Mitchell: James Cameron Goes Nuclear: From Avatar to Hiroshima
Avatar director James Cameron, who could choose just about any subject for upcoming projects, has purchased the rights to a new book about the aftermath of the 1945 atomic attacks.
The newspaper may be dying, but the act of accurately chronicling our times, reporting, and observing is greatly needed for society to be informed and knowledgeable and progressive.
'Last Train From Hiroshima' Tells Survivors' Stories : NPR
Author Charles Pellegrino to remove 'Hiroshima' impostor from future editions
Pellegrino was duped by an elderly man, Joseph Fuoco (now dead), who *was* a WW II aviator who honorably served at the same base and the same time and became a career firefighter, but who puffed up his resume, perhaps to impress a girl back home or his fellow VFW members. According to Pellegrino quoted from articles, he said that Fuoco must have held and embellished that lie so much over the decades that by the time Pellegrino met him, Fuoco himself believed it to be true.
The fact is that detailed military service records of who flew what when at that time are not available, so in this case historians doing direct research (instead of second sourcing) have to rely on oral histories. Pellegrino's mistake was that he didn't collect enough oral histories, but that is partly because surviving aviators from those incidents are rare and the families are suspect of talking to strangers about their parent or grandparents' direct involvement in causing the horrific death of hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women and children.
I think the article made the Publisher's role more clear. I don't think the one or two sentences about Pellegrino rose to the level of libel.