I like this column by Steven M. Barr, over at First Things. First of all, it explodes one of those beloved bits of modern folklore, the one about Einstein being a bad student as a kid. Exploding error is always a good thing, however much comfort I may have derived from this particular legend as a boy. Then Barr goes on to discuss the deathless question of how much we can trust experts:

My own guiding principle is to trust the experts (generally speaking) on anything purely technical, but to rely more on my own judgment as far as human realities go. I trust the architect on what will keep the building up but not on what is beautiful. I trust the pediatrician, but not the child psychologist.

That’s about how I’d put it, only I’d be talking with less… whatchacallit. Expertise.

Turning to matters related to Phil’s post below on proofreading and fact-checking, I was reading this month’s Smithsonian Magazine today, and was surprised to see how long their list of corrections from last month was. Fact after fact had been wrong. I found a mistake in this month’s issue myself (only I can’t find it again now).

Nevertheless, I was much intrigued by this article by Michael Walsh. He was working on a couple of writing projects about Andrew Lloyd Webber, he tells us, back in 1987. Webber, of course, wrote the music for the big musical version of The Phantom of the Opera. In the course of that project, Walsh read the original novel by Gaston Leroux. This novel contains the line, “It will be remembered that, later, when digging in the substructure of the Opéra, before burying the phonographic records of the artist’s voice, the workmen laid bare a corpse.”

Readers for generations had read that sentence without bothering to ask, “Who buried phonograph records in the opera house, and why?”

Well, Walsh discovered the answer when he searched the theater (for other purposes) and accidentally came across a small door with a plaque that read, “The room in which are contained the gramophone records.”

Turns out that a number of very early recordings of the world’s greatest opera singers of the day had been placed in sealed containers and entombed in that room as a time capsule. They were buried in 1907, and were supposed to be opened in 2007.

The theater management had forgotten all about the time capsule by the time Walsh rediscovered it, but they decided to honor the original intention, and leave them alone for another two decades. However, the room was rediscovered by air conditioning workers a couple years later, and then it was opened. Since one container was visibly damaged, they were all removed, but not opened. Walsh says one of them is going to be opened this month (the delay, apparently, springs from difficulties in handling the old discs without damaging them). The recordings will eventually be digitally copied and sold to the public.

Anyway, it all goes to show what every novelist knows—readers don’t pay attention!

Update: I remember the Smithsonian mistake now. In their article on composer/arranger Quincy Jones, they said he’s a descendent of George Washington. There are no descendents of George Washington.