Yes, the Reading List has some “splaining to I do — for the third week in a row. In the correction of an error about the plot of Evelyn Waugh’s $ IBlack Mischief, another was committed: The act of cannibalism alluded to does not occur on the book’s final page. “Basil Seal did not ingest his fiance at the cannibal banquet in the last paragraph of the novel, but in the penultimate chapter,” writes William P. O’Neill of Washington, D.C., who is charitable enough to add that “the Reading List remains the best part of the magazine.” Dennis Dort of Los Angeles has more fun with yet another booboo: ” It has become weekly sport at our house: gathering around the fire to find the Reading List error. Phineas Redux is, of course, the fourth of the six Palliser novels Do I get a T-shirt or something. No. No T-shirt for you, wise guy.
So now the contest begins. Each week, there will be an error in the Reading List. Find it and you win . . . nothing except the mention of your name in the Reading List, affirming for all the nation to see your remarkable literacy.
As part of our act of contrition, we thought we would offer a list of memorable prose works about literary gaffes:
The Devils, by Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky was one of the funniest writers who ever lived, though you would not know it from his reputation. A hilarious section in the middle of the novel features a popinjay character thinly based on fellow Russian novelist Ivan Goncharov, who offers a public performance of his final work, called Merci because of his excessive Francophilia. The attack was a strange payback for Goncharov’s generosity toward Dostoyevsky during a period of impoverishment a few years before.
The Next Time, by Henry James. A long short story about a writer who decides he needs to write a commercially viable work — and watches as it does worse than any other piece of writing he has ever done.
The Locusts Have No King, by Dawn Powell. Powell is the long-forgotten now- heralded American writer who specialized in satires of the New York literary scene. This book, her best, is a reworked version of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, in which a soulless beauty marries upward and, unlike in Wharton, becomes a famous writer — even though she never writes her own stuff.
Good luck.
