This week's reading

The blurb says this person has already published six books so you are expecting a degree of professionalism, a sign that here is someone whose medium is language and who will therefore have also read a lot, have learned from editors and publishers, have made an effort to understand how language works and to master the medium of his/her art and craft. But no.

It's a set of uncorrected proofs, but these are errors of ignorance, not typos. In less than 300 pages, we have

'sprung' for 'sprang'
'lent' for 'leant' or 'leaned'
'he gave it to Ermintrude and I' (for 'to Ermintrude and me')
'slither' for 'sliver' ('bamboo slithers' -- I think this one is a sort of eggcorn: some slivers are sort of slithery)
'vocal chords' for 'vocal cords' (so is this one: there's an association of meaning between voice and music)
'cohort' for 'companion' (singular -- the sense in which it's used here is, oh, say, 'this wine is a perfect cohort for this cheese')
'inferred' for 'implied'

With one exception, all these errors have been made more than once. Then the finished copy of the novel arrives in the next batch of books and I check to see how many of these clangers have been fixed: two. But there are lavish thanks to editors on the Acknowledgements page. And it's a big major well-known international publishing company.

Perhaps said company has survived by doing away with the services of competent editors. On the other hand, considering how little editors get paid, you'd think it would make no visible difference to the bottom line.

As with all these usage whining posts, the point is that people who use language for a living -- writers, journalists, radio and TV presenters -- have a responsibility to use it professionally. There's no difference between this and the bathroom tiler being eight centimetres out, the pro tennis player being fifteen kilos overweight, the surgeon being a tad hazy about the difference between livers and kidneys. This is not a whine about the language of the alleged person in the street, who often knows better in any case.

Besides, page 19 of the next book restores your faith:

Inside, the diner is meant to look like the 1950s, but it doesn't look anything like how I remember them. Somewhere along the line, people became convinced that the decade was all about sock hops, poodle skirts, rock and roll, shiny red T-birds, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis. It's funny how a whole decade gets reduced into a few seemingly random pictures. For me, that decade was about diapers and training wheels and miscarriages and trying to house and feed three people on $47 a week.

This is another set of uncorrected proofs. But somehow I just know that any errors in it will be typographical or otherwise mechanical; that the person responsible for this seamless marriage of style and content within a vividly realised character's narrative voice is not going to say slither or lent or inferred. This is someone who understands his craft and has worked to master it.