Someone concerned about the CBS company reputation says former president Jimmy Carter’s last book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, is so full of errors it makes the company look bad. She suggests a fact-checking system to screen books before publishing. Putting aside CBS’ reputation, what do you think about this system? How responsible should publishers be for the research of their authors?
There’s an interesting anecdote in Paul Johnson’s MODERN TIMES, about how Ernest Hemingway took Eric Blair (George Orwell) aside after Blair/Orwell had written about a massacre of priests and nuns by Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, in HOMAGE TO CATALONIA. Hemingway tried to make him understand that a fact isn’t _really_ a fact unless it serves the greater truth–that is, the Progressive cause.
Orwell somehow didn’t get the message. But it may have given him an idea for a story…
Well, facts do require a context for fully understanding them, but I don’t suppose that’s what Hemingway meant. You know, I read somewhere within the last few days that ‘Homage to Catalonia’ was Orwell’s greatest book or at least much better than ‘Animal Farm’ or ‘1984.’
I don’t know about ‘Catalonia’ but I seem to remember enjoying ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ considerably more than the famous pair.