Such shreddes of sentence strewed in the shop
May 9, 2013 § Leave a comment
Dear Wikipedia
I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.
Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”
Thus was created the occasion for this open letter. After failing to get a change made through the usual channels, I don’t know how else to proceed.
Roth then goes on to explain that while our article claimed Anatole Broyard was the inspiration, the inspiration was in fact Melvin Tumin. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Jesse Riggins
my nerves are bad to-night 
Leave a Reply