Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Author Roth rebukes Wikipedia over Human Stain edit


Philip Roth (file pic)

Philip Roth rose to prominence in 1969 with his novel Portnoy's Complaint

Renowned author Philip Roth has criticised Wikipedia after he was unable to convince the site to change an entry about one of his novels.

Roth tried to tell Wikipedia about an error in the entry for his novel The Human Stain, published in 2000.
But the site's administrators initially refused to amend the entry, saying they required a second source.
The prize-winning US author, 79, is famed for his tales of Jewish life, relationships and mortality.
The Human Stain tells the tale of Coleman Silk, a classics tutor at a fictional Massachusetts college, whose life spirals into chaos after he makes an ill-received remark judged by some as a racial slur.

According to the Wikipedia entry - which has now been amended - Silk, who Roth portrayed as born to black parents but who lived his life as a white man, was based on the character of writer and critic Anatole Broyard.
Broyard, a star book reviewer for the New York Times for many years, was also born to a black family but lived as white.
'No truth' However, in a lengthy open letter published on the website of the New Yorker magazine, Roth insists that the idea his character was based on Broyard was utterly incorrect.

Full story at BBC

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