Post by EXO on Jan 23, 2011 6:24:50 GMT 8
I don't mind in the slightest if people who are going through Tacloban purchase the book, I would even go so far as to encourage them. Many folk do no research whatever into the places they go, and it's a pity. But as the book is still being sold new, I think that the publisher should mark it "fiction."
But hey,
What gets my gall are the people who sew fact and fiction together and call it fact. That is literary fraud. Let's take King Rat, for example. James Clavell did what Valentine did -- or rather, Valentine did what James Clavell did -- mix fact and fiction. (Clavell wrote from personal experience.) Does that make Clavell a literary fraud? No way, Jose! Clavell released King Rat as fiction, and it went on to be one of the finest of the genre. Through it, he educated more people about the POW experience than a score of Valentines. He also co-wrote the screenplay The Great Escape, though something suggests he didn't write about Steve McQueen jumping vast barbed wire fences on a stolen German mortorcycle.)
The difference between literary frauds and brilliant novelists is the decision by the fraudster to claim the mantle of truth. The fraudsters invite criticism upon themselves, which is probably the defining reason they ignore it. You can't defend the indefensible, so why bother? (Unless you are in politics, of course, where it pays well.)
Would you have wasted your time comparing names between the book and the Australian War Graves Commission had he released it as fiction? Not likely. So, in my book, he's stolen some of your time from you. On the bright side, you are jolly well entitled to write a damning review on the book now, using the phrase...
and I encourage you to.
As for gold stories, I'd say that one in a ten thousand is partly true, and that your nephew was that one. I won't say he's lucky, for he made his own luck. Everyone in the Philippines seems to have at least one gold story. I suspect that if it wasn't for gold stories, Yamashita wouldn't be remembered in the Philippines much at all.
But hey,
What gets my gall are the people who sew fact and fiction together and call it fact. That is literary fraud. Let's take King Rat, for example. James Clavell did what Valentine did -- or rather, Valentine did what James Clavell did -- mix fact and fiction. (Clavell wrote from personal experience.) Does that make Clavell a literary fraud? No way, Jose! Clavell released King Rat as fiction, and it went on to be one of the finest of the genre. Through it, he educated more people about the POW experience than a score of Valentines. He also co-wrote the screenplay The Great Escape, though something suggests he didn't write about Steve McQueen jumping vast barbed wire fences on a stolen German mortorcycle.)
The difference between literary frauds and brilliant novelists is the decision by the fraudster to claim the mantle of truth. The fraudsters invite criticism upon themselves, which is probably the defining reason they ignore it. You can't defend the indefensible, so why bother? (Unless you are in politics, of course, where it pays well.)
Would you have wasted your time comparing names between the book and the Australian War Graves Commission had he released it as fiction? Not likely. So, in my book, he's stolen some of your time from you. On the bright side, you are jolly well entitled to write a damning review on the book now, using the phrase...
"...I have tried to match names of dead in his book with the Australian War Graves Commission but they came up zero. The only thing that appears to have existed in fact is the POW camp..."
and I encourage you to.
As for gold stories, I'd say that one in a ten thousand is partly true, and that your nephew was that one. I won't say he's lucky, for he made his own luck. Everyone in the Philippines seems to have at least one gold story. I suspect that if it wasn't for gold stories, Yamashita wouldn't be remembered in the Philippines much at all.