Quote:
Originally Posted by Yapyap
Unless the American editor decided to replace every instance of a mention of a walk by the character "stretching his legs" - and in that case, I'd rather not put the blame on the author! - this strikes me as a truly odd argument to make.
|
I don't happen to own that book in the American edition or otherwise (though it sounds as if the UK edition would be preferable). Still, it's very likely that some other MR member owns the same version that Mr. Bloom bought at the Yale University bookstore. If so, I'd love to know how many times the phrase is used in that edition. If it occurs exactly once, then (1) that's the most hilarious argument against Bloom I've ever heard and (2) I'm surprised no one at the
Boston Globe thought to confirm his stat before publishing the piece. Too many people who read that paper know the Potter books well, which could make a mistake like that especially embarrassing.
Besides which, such an easily unprovable claim should have been answered by a few crushing replies.
Bloom's book on Yeats could have been written by a lunatic and his theory of influence (his so-called "map of misreading") is maddeningly arbitrary. Perhaps he'd have benefited from being "punched in the head every five minutes" (as Yeats's teacher, Miss May Morris, once said about Carlyle). Calling him on a Falstaffian exaggeration like this one -- if what you say holds true -- could have delivered such a punch.
However, your argument about the
editor being at fault for a repeated cliche doesn't seem terribly practical. Virtually every writer has been edited, yet we tend to talk about a book's defects in terms of the writer alone.