The house of Random Penguins

[Quoth]

Have they lost the plot?

Non-Fiction titles shouldn't be fiction?

https://observer.co.uk/news/national...ebt-and-deceit

Penguin has not responded.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Have they lost the plot?

Non-Fiction titles shouldn't be fiction?

https://observer.co.uk/news/national...ebt-and-deceit

Penguin has not responded.

How much fact checking can you really expect? Especially something like a memoir? I don't think this is the first or last time something like this has happened. Catch me if you can for example is also very suspect for example.

[issybird]

Fascinating.

If there's a genre called "Long Walks" it's one of my absolute favorites and I thought this book would be a slam dunk for me. Instead, I ended up abandoning it and it made my "Worst of 2020" list. I thought it poorly written and repetitive, wallowing in pathos, and it ultimately strained my credulity. Nice to have confirmation!

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

How much fact checking can you really expect?

There's a common-sense litmus test regarding credibility and I'd argue that Salt Path flunked spectacularly. The flipside is that I'm sure marketability was the only serious criterion and given its being a memoir, PRH could take refuge in plausible deniability if questions were raised.

[Quoth]

There are also plenty of other movies supposedly non-fiction that are dodgy. See recent Netflix controversies.

One of my early cinema visits was a Disney Wildlife documentary, now infamous! The lemmings scene was faked. Did it inspire the Lemmings DOS game about 40 years later?

If there's a genre called "Long Walks" it's one of my absolute favorites

Well, there are fictional ones that are fun. The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings off the top of my head. Even a Norse story with Thor & Loki (they pick up a young boy and and his sister as slaves on the way and sleep in a giant's glove).

There is even a discredited thesis which discusses the Hero's Journey.,

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Well, there are fictional ones that are fun. The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings off the top of my head.

Lewis and Tolkien are big nyets for me in any case, but I'm not interested in a fictional walk as a walk. It would depend on the nature of the novel itself.

I think the towering classic of the travel/walking subcategory would have to be Patrick Leigh Fermor's A Time of Gifts, but there are many others nearly as magical. And not Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, also heavily fictionalized!

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

Lewis and Tolkien are big nyets for me in any case, but I'm not interested in a fictional walk as a walk.

Marmite.

[JSWolf]

One of the worst ting PRH do is put in an advert with a big graphic and some really realy useless embedded fonts. This makes the size of the eBook puff up for no good reason at all.

[JSWolf]

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is not a true story but is a very good movie.

[SteveEisenberg]

From the OP link:

Winn has since written two sequels and has a lucrative publishing deal with Penguin to produce at least one more.

So it looks like Random House paid a big advance, for a fourth book, that they will almost certainly want to claw back. Either that, or the Observer article is a libelous falsehood, which I doubt.

Random House will then be in line with some of the other creditors mentioned in the article.

While I don't expect Random House to fact check the way The Atlantic does, PRH should do better than they did here.

Perhaps Random House normally would catch something so blatant, with this author being an unusually skillful grifter.

Modest proposal to nonfiction book editors: If your budget won't allow a full Atlantic-style fact check, at least do a good job on the acknowledgements. I'm thinking grifters cannot resist padding that.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

Lewis and Tolkien are big nyets for me in any case, but I'm not interested in a fictional walk as a walk. It would depend on the nature of the novel itself.

I can understand that and it's perfectly valid. A school teacher read Prince Caspian to us when I was 10 near the end of summer term, so that coloured my outlook. I'd read much Irish, Greek, Norse legends and fairy tales by then and read LOTR when I was maybe 12 or 13. Lighter and easier than The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and more depth than Biggles or The Saint (which I preferred to James Bond). I probably had read all the SF in the local library by 13.

Most know Ian Fleming (a desk jockey in Intelligence) and his fantasy spy james Bond. Compare Le Carré's Circus or Len Deighton or Helen McInnes.

His elder brother, Peter Fleming might really have been a spy and writes better, though I've only read two of his travel stories.
I have all three of these on paper:

1934 One's Company: A Journey to China in 1933 – Travels through the USSR, Manchuria and China. Later reissued as half of Travels in Tartary.
1936 News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to Kashmir – Journey from Peking to Srinagar via Sinkiang. He was accompanied on this journey by Ella Maillart (Kini). Later reissued as half of Travels in Tartary.

Of course anything "autobiographical" by anyone can be a bit suspect on what is included, excluded, distorted and made up! See Roald Dahl's autobiography, who I thought of because toward the end of his life Ian Fleming regretted prioritising James Bond more than his son, so wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang stories for him. This was made into a somewhat different movie, with Roald Dahl involved on the the Screenplay and sacked. Dahl almost certainly invented the Child-catcher which is not even hinted at in the original stories.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I can understand that and it's perfectly valid. A school teacher read Prince Caspian to us when I was 10 near the end of summer term, so that coloured my outlook. I'd read much Irish, Greek, Norse legends and fairy tales by then and read LOTR when I was maybe 12 or 13.

Even when young, I had a very limited tolerance for anthropomorphized creatures. I really tried with LOTR, but I found it a terrible slog and abandoned it with relief. In fairness to Narnia, I probably came to it too late.

His elder brother, Peter Fleming might really have been a spy and writes better, though I've only read two of his travel stories.

I’ve read One’s Company and News from Tartary, both excellent; I think Tartary in particular is one of the classics of the genre. The last time I looked, they were the only two of his titles available as ebooks; I’ve always meant to dig up his Brazil book and Maillart’s account of the Tartary trip, but I strongly prefer not to read paper.

Of course anything "autobiographical" by anyone can be a bit suspect on what is included, excluded, distorted and made up!

Not denying there’s a lot of art involved in good travel writing, but it needs to fall far short of outright fabrication. Of course memories are suspect, too.

[nana77]

Originally Posted by issybird

Not denying there’s a lot of art involved in good travel writing, but it needs to fall far short of outright fabrication. Of course memories are suspect, too.

In here, in 1993 Lorenzo Cherubini, also known as "Jovanotti", which was and is a well known singer (despite being, those times, kindly a "paninaro"), wrote a book that I'd found fantastic (I don't know if mentioning it while it's not transalted might be too OT), "Il grande Boh!" (The great Boh! - "Boh" as onomatopoeia): he traveled 1200 km within his racing bicycle in Brazil arriving in Tierra del Fuego.
The book was great, his simple stance despite being well known in music, letting all things aside, girlfriend included for those months.
But yes: shortly after, as many others artists likewise, it became to grow just the turd part of him LOL.
The book was surprising because, even if he already was a "City guy", the narration in there is quite modest, but again, lasted just for the narration time (but imho).

Maybe worth mentioning, as travelling books, "On the road" by Jack Kerouac (started 3 times but by those times never read it entirely).

*(by the way, hi , and an "hooray" for the forums calm-arium environment. Thanks).

Ah, there are some others books that would had been great, slightly in the topic imho: the Routards Guides, personally I'd used once one in '98, for a travel in Mexico.
Can't not say those travellers made the bestest guides ever, there was places and descriptions that even locals wouldn't had known; too I have to say times were different.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by issybird

I’ve read One’s Company and News from Tartary, both excellent; I think Tartary in particular is one of the classics of the genre. The last time I looked, they were the only two of his titles available as ebooks; I’ve always meant to dig up his Brazil book and Maillart’s account of the Tartary trip, but I strongly prefer not to read paper.

Yes, I prefer ebooks now. But people still give me paper ones.

I thought you might like Tartary, but I hadn't imagined you'd read it. It goes to show that famousness and sales might be unrelated to quality.

From 2007 by Clive James (a good writer IMO)


I'd be interested to read more of Peter Fleming, but never seen any.


EDIT:
I'm not that keen on anthropomorphic animals. Read the Redwall series if you want to annoy yourself with that. Redwall would work fine with people. Not sure Wind In the Willows would. Maybe all of the Narnia books except the first (TLTW&TW) could have worked without anthropomorphic animals. Was it purely because of childhood "Boxen" or was it just a case of the kitchen sink in the 1st book?
Watership Down maybe works better than Redwall. I tried the Duncton Wood series (moles) and don't know why I bought more than one. OTOH I have all of Wheel of Time, but lost interest somewhat during the 5th book and never finished the 1st one Sanderson wrote.

Disney annoys me (not the only reason) by sticking in anthropomorphic animals (and even objects) in the animation that are not even in the original work. I liked Disney till I was about 11, though aspects always annoyed. They annoyed me even more when I read the original works. They are a blot.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by nana77

(despite being, those times, kindly a "paninaro"),

Thanks for the very descriptive new vocabulary word!

Ah, there are some others books that would had been great, slightly in the topic imho: the Routards Guides, personally I'd used once one in '98, for a travel in Mexico.
Can't not say those travellers made the bestest guides ever, there was places and descriptions that even locals wouldn't had known; too I have to say times were different.

I like old travel guides, the rule of thumb that they have to be really old and not just dated. And yes, they're an inadvertent snapshot of their times, in addition to being guidebooks to places.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I thought you might like Tartary, but I hadn't imagined you'd read it.

I'm something of a travel lit junky; in addition my reading tastes skew British and one of my favorite periods is between the wars. So it checks a lot of boxes for me.

From 2007 by Clive James (a good writer IMO)

Hah! Spot-on. Thanks. I've been a James fan for years, starting with his memoirs (some of which I had to order from Britain, back in a golden age when both books and international postage were a lot cheaper than they are now). I have several of his compendia, for want of a better word, essays, poetry anthologies etc. Good for dipping into. I don't always agree with him, but he's usually fun or enlightening if not both. I don't think he was much of a presence here, but as he notes in the linked article, much of his celebrity in Britain was due to his tv gigs.

I liked Disney till I was about 11, though aspects always annoyed. They annoyed me even more when I read the original works. They are a blot.

Worst of all, people take the Disney version as scripture. Just as one example, I suspect many, if not most, don't know that Disney and not the Brothers Grimm named the dwarfs. Which means that other adaptations can't use the dwarf names and people assume they got it wrong.

I have a soft spot for Pinocchio, though.