media I wish people could READ

Posted May 20, 2007 • Comments Off on I wish people could READ

There’s an Op-Ed piece about copyright in the Times today by one of my favorite authors, Mark Helprin, he of (off the top of my head) Winter’s Tale, Memoir from Antproof Case, A Soldier of the Great War, Refiner’s Fire, Ellis Island, A Dove of the East, and the wonderful Swan Lake trilogy. Whether one agrees or not with his case for perpetual copyright, one could at least pay him the courtesy of spelling his motherfucking name right. So far today, both BoingBoing and Slashdot have called him “Mark Halprin.” BoingBoing also called him an “SF novelist” and for some reason put an “A” onto the start of the name of my favorite book.

Winter’s Tale is a wonderful thing, one of those stories you want never to end, fast-paced and daring and magic, happening all at once, nearby and nowhere. But if it is science fiction I’ll eat my hat. Has no one but me and Nancy Pearl noticed that Americans can write magical realism too?
Update: BoingBoing fixed their spelling, but still has the name of the novel wrong. A Winter’s Tale is a Shakespeare play. Winter’s Tale is a Mark Helprin novel.

READING IS EASY. DO IT.