10 ms·

Philip Roth: An Open Letter to Wikipedia

Mithrandir 14y ago
From Wikipedia: On September 7, 2012, Roth wrote an open letter to Wikipedia in the The New Yorker in which he dismissed critics' earlier suggestions that his novel was inspired by Anatole Broyard.[13] He said that he had used an incident in the life of his friend, Melvin Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton, and created everything else about his character, Coleman Silk. Roth used details from Tumin's experience in the events that led to Silk's resigning from the college.[13] Roth acknowledged that he had met Broyard, but wrote that he barely knew him.[13] He said, "I’ve never known, spoken to, or, to my knowledge, been in the company of a single member of Broyard’s family. I did not even know whether he had children."[13] Bliss Broyard, the daughter of Anatole Broyard, posted a response on Facebook: "I think it’s completely reasonable that Roth should be allowed to have the last word on who inspires his characters and even obfuscate about the sources if he wants to… BUT I don’t think it’s reasonable that Roth gets to dictate what conclusions other people draw about his characters, which is effectively what he was trying to do with his objection to Wikipedia’s description of the book as 'allegedly' having been inspired by my dad."[14] She said her father had introduced her to Roth at a literary party when she was 22: " 'Bliss,' my father said, rather pompously, 'this is one of our most important American novelists.' He [Roth] turned to regard me. 'So lithe and pale,' he pronounced. 'Like a ghost.' It was a brief encounter—one I’m not surprised that he might have forgotten—but I am sure you all can understand why I haven’t."[14]
- petegrif 14y ago
  Surely he isn't trying to dictate what conclusions other people draw? He is simply trying to state facts as he sees them and help those who have drawn inaccurate conclusions based on speculation or lack of evidence.
  - kwekly 14y ago
    If you read to the end of the article, you come across an an interesting comment that might be of relevance here: "If you think Phillip Roth, one of the greatest living writers, wrote this 2,648 word piece to get a remark on Wikipedia changed, I think you've missed his point. - GREGPOMEROY
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Right. He wrote it because it was a paying gig, it fed I his ego, and he likes writing.
      - niels_olson 14y ago
        Maybe he actually cares about the future of culture, recognizes that Wikipedia is extremely relevant, and wants to make a difference. Maybe he thinks more people outside current 20-somethings should care about this issue, and is thereby inviting them to join in the conversation. Attribute no more malice to any one else than you attribute to yourself.
    - bravoyankee 14y ago
      Exactly. This seems like brilliant marketing (for a brilliant book, judging by the book reviews).
- ghshephard 14y ago
  Ironically, "Ghost" and "Spook" are synonyms for each other.
britta 14y ago
This is a response by a person who works for the Wikimedia Foundation (a personal response, not an official response): http://quominus.org/archives/979 http://quominus.org/archives/979 "There’s only one problem with this: Roth’s open letter is at best the (justifiably) aggrieved and confused ramblings of a man ignorantly discussing what he does not understand or remember..." It's long and probably worth reading to get a more balanced view of the situation.
- niels_olson 14y ago
  After professor Messer-Kruse's struggles with the Haymarket riot (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/ http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/13...), I submit Roth's approach is entirely appropriate.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    Did you take the time to read the article linked above? What part of it did you not find compelling? It's a rant, yes, but it contains a series of direct refutations of Roth.
    - niels_olson 14y ago
      I did, and found it quite hyperbolic. It seems the basis of the complaint is that someone in the world with more public influence than a Wikipedia admin took their complaint to a public forum with a wider reach than Wikipedia talk pages. Nowhere did I suggest Roth is perfectly correct. But the general assertion of this line of dissent is that Roth should suck Wikipedia eggs until he groks Wikipedia, and until he does, he should otherwise keep quiet. Roth, his biographer, or both, seem to not thoroughly understand Wikipedia. I'm not arguing that. However, even with an imperfect understanding, the nature of his solution to the problem is correct in the first iteration.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        That's not the general assertion the article makes. Roth complained about an interpretation of _The Human Stain_ that had been made in numerous extremely reputable secondary sources, despite the fact that the article included a recitation of Roth's own intent. That's the core argument beneath the rant. Is that argument _wrong_? If not, it seems pretty compelling, regardless of how the rant itself is written. Facts don't become not facts simply because they're written hyperbolically.
ta12121 14y ago
Didn't this already make the aggregator rounds a few months ago when it first came out?
- niels_olson 14y ago
  If it did, it's still okay to post it now. Have you heard about Marcus Aurelius's Mediations? They're great. You should read them. (Hint: not the first time that's been said in a public forum, or "news aggregator", if that's what you want to call it.)
  - rohamg 14y ago
    Marcus Aurelius and Phillip Roth's open letter in the same breath? You have cajones I'll give you that!
- wslh 14y ago
  I am one who posted it a few time ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4514266 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4514266
saurik 14y ago
I really don't understand how Wikipedia feels like a "secondary source" is meaningful: most secondary sources (newspapers being a great example) just print whatever they are told by random non-expert or highly biased primary sources; I have seen this first-hand while talking to reporters doing interviews with me on various topics. In practice, the fact checking departments, even for headline stories in the physical version of the paper for the largest publications in the country, end up just calling the primary source to get a clarification: so, if an article about Roth were to have ended up in the New York Times, Roth himself actually would have been consulted on whether or not it was true, and yet somehow going through that intermediary makes the situation more credible to Wikipedia... insanity. Further, many secondary sources are actually themselves based on Wikipedia as their primary source: if you then are willing to cite secondary sources as verifications of information that is then posted to Wikipedia, it is highly trivial to end up with self-reinforcing information loops; in addition to there being multiple highly-cited examples of this, I have seen it happen first-hand with a friend constructing such a situation (which eventually got noticed and deleted, but only due to a highly suspicious editor that attempted to track down whether the sources were actually using Wikipedia as their reference; had it been slightly more vague I bet we would forever be stuck with that particular misinformation). I will even argue that the idea of using secondary sources at all is short sighted: the very secondary sources that Wikipedia is attempting to cite are slowly dying out due to Internet replaces that happen to include Wikipedia itself. In another decade, the source material for remotely credible secondary sources is likely to have dwindled to almost nothing: we will be left with things more akin to wikis and blogs and the kind of broken thought streams that are characteristic of today's Twitter and Facebook: we are (quite sadly, I will argue) quite likely to no longer be allocating such funds to centralized larger sources like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal to keep them operational. Finally, I will point out that it ignores the heritage of an encyclopedia: as far as I understand, the way the great encyclopedias were written actually did involve conscripting the world's great minds to write what were in essence summary articles of various parts of their fields so that people in other disciplines, or even the lay person, could rapidly get a general understanding of the subject matter. (One specific place I got this impression was from reading a book about Thomas Young, who wrote a number of articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica). Yet, now, the encyclopedia that has become the de facto standard--I will argue entirely due to technology and community, and not due to the dictates that it claims are so holy--requires information to have first been published in sources like newspapers, rather than sources like academic journals... it is honestly highly depressing.

From Wikipedia: On September 7, 2012, Roth wrote an open letter to Wikipedia in the The New Yorker in which he dismissed critics' earlier suggestions that his novel was inspired by Anatole Broyard.[13] He said that he had used an incident in the life of his friend, Melvin Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton, and created everything else about his character, Coleman Silk. Roth used details from Tumin's experience in the events that led to Silk's resigning from the college.[13] Roth acknowledged that he had met Broyard, but wrote that he barely knew him.[13] He said, "I’ve never known, spoken to, or, to my knowledge, been in the company of a single member of Broyard’s family. I did not even know whether he had children."[13] Bliss Broyard, the daughter of Anatole Broyard, posted a response on Facebook: "I think it’s completely reasonable that Roth should be allowed to have the last word on who inspires his characters and even obfuscate about the sources if he wants to… BUT I don’t think it’s reasonable that Roth gets to dictate what conclusions other people draw about his characters, which is effectively what he was trying to do with his objection to Wikipedia’s description of the book as 'allegedly' having been inspired by my dad."[14] She said her father had introduced her to Roth at a literary party when she was 22: " 'Bliss,' my father said, rather pompously, 'this is one of our most important American novelists.' He [Roth] turned to regard me. 'So lithe and pale,' he pronounced. 'Like a ghost.' It was a brief encounter—one I’m not surprised that he might have forgotten—but I am sure you all can understand why I haven’t."[14]

petegrif 14y ago
Surely he isn't trying to dictate what conclusions other people draw? He is simply trying to state facts as he sees them and help those who have drawn inaccurate conclusions based on speculation or lack of evidence.
- kwekly 14y ago
  If you read to the end of the article, you come across an an interesting comment that might be of relevance here: "If you think Phillip Roth, one of the greatest living writers, wrote this 2,648 word piece to get a remark on Wikipedia changed, I think you've missed his point. - GREGPOMEROY
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Right. He wrote it because it was a paying gig, it fed I his ego, and he likes writing.
    - niels_olson 14y ago
      Maybe he actually cares about the future of culture, recognizes that Wikipedia is extremely relevant, and wants to make a difference. Maybe he thinks more people outside current 20-somethings should care about this issue, and is thereby inviting them to join in the conversation. Attribute no more malice to any one else than you attribute to yourself.
  - bravoyankee 14y ago
    Exactly. This seems like brilliant marketing (for a brilliant book, judging by the book reviews).
ghshephard 14y ago
Ironically, "Ghost" and "Spook" are synonyms for each other.

britta 14y ago

This is a response by a person who works for the Wikimedia Foundation (a personal response, not an official response): http://quominus.org/archives/979 http://quominus.org/archives/979 "There’s only one problem with this: Roth’s open letter is at best the (justifiably) aggrieved and confused ramblings of a man ignorantly discussing what he does not understand or remember..." It's long and probably worth reading to get a more balanced view of the situation.

niels_olson 14y ago
After professor Messer-Kruse's struggles with the Haymarket riot (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/130704/ http://chronicle.com/article/The-Undue-Weight-of-Truth-on/13...), I submit Roth's approach is entirely appropriate.
- tptacek 14y ago
  Did you take the time to read the article linked above? What part of it did you not find compelling? It's a rant, yes, but it contains a series of direct refutations of Roth.
  - niels_olson 14y ago
    I did, and found it quite hyperbolic. It seems the basis of the complaint is that someone in the world with more public influence than a Wikipedia admin took their complaint to a public forum with a wider reach than Wikipedia talk pages. Nowhere did I suggest Roth is perfectly correct. But the general assertion of this line of dissent is that Roth should suck Wikipedia eggs until he groks Wikipedia, and until he does, he should otherwise keep quiet. Roth, his biographer, or both, seem to not thoroughly understand Wikipedia. I'm not arguing that. However, even with an imperfect understanding, the nature of his solution to the problem is correct in the first iteration.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      That's not the general assertion the article makes. Roth complained about an interpretation of _The Human Stain_ that had been made in numerous extremely reputable secondary sources, despite the fact that the article included a recitation of Roth's own intent. That's the core argument beneath the rant. Is that argument _wrong_? If not, it seems pretty compelling, regardless of how the rant itself is written. Facts don't become not facts simply because they're written hyperbolically.

ta12121 14y ago

Didn't this already make the aggregator rounds a few months ago when it first came out?

niels_olson 14y ago
If it did, it's still okay to post it now. Have you heard about Marcus Aurelius's Mediations? They're great. You should read them. (Hint: not the first time that's been said in a public forum, or "news aggregator", if that's what you want to call it.)
- rohamg 14y ago
  Marcus Aurelius and Phillip Roth's open letter in the same breath? You have cajones I'll give you that!
wslh 14y ago
I am one who posted it a few time ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4514266 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4514266

saurik 14y ago

I really don't understand how Wikipedia feels like a "secondary source" is meaningful: most secondary sources (newspapers being a great example) just print whatever they are told by random non-expert or highly biased primary sources; I have seen this first-hand while talking to reporters doing interviews with me on various topics. In practice, the fact checking departments, even for headline stories in the physical version of the paper for the largest publications in the country, end up just calling the primary source to get a clarification: so, if an article about Roth were to have ended up in the New York Times, Roth himself actually would have been consulted on whether or not it was true, and yet somehow going through that intermediary makes the situation more credible to Wikipedia... insanity. Further, many secondary sources are actually themselves based on Wikipedia as their primary source: if you then are willing to cite secondary sources as verifications of information that is then posted to Wikipedia, it is highly trivial to end up with self-reinforcing information loops; in addition to there being multiple highly-cited examples of this, I have seen it happen first-hand with a friend constructing such a situation (which eventually got noticed and deleted, but only due to a highly suspicious editor that attempted to track down whether the sources were actually using Wikipedia as their reference; had it been slightly more vague I bet we would forever be stuck with that particular misinformation). I will even argue that the idea of using secondary sources at all is short sighted: the very secondary sources that Wikipedia is attempting to cite are slowly dying out due to Internet replaces that happen to include Wikipedia itself. In another decade, the source material for remotely credible secondary sources is likely to have dwindled to almost nothing: we will be left with things more akin to wikis and blogs and the kind of broken thought streams that are characteristic of today's Twitter and Facebook: we are (quite sadly, I will argue) quite likely to no longer be allocating such funds to centralized larger sources like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal to keep them operational. Finally, I will point out that it ignores the heritage of an encyclopedia: as far as I understand, the way the great encyclopedias were written actually did involve conscripting the world's great minds to write what were in essence summary articles of various parts of their fields so that people in other disciplines, or even the lay person, could rapidly get a general understanding of the subject matter. (One specific place I got this impression was from reading a book about Thomas Young, who wrote a number of articles for the Encyclopedia Britannica). Yet, now, the encyclopedia that has become the de facto standard--I will argue entirely due to technology and community, and not due to the dictates that it claims are so holy--requires information to have first been published in sources like newspapers, rather than sources like academic journals... it is honestly highly depressing.