Helen DeWitt

Novelist (The Last Samurai et al.). Interested in languages, statistics, dataviz.

NOT HdW the film curator, who is no longer on X.

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

In 2023 I read @LKonstan’s The Last Samurai Reread. No comment re critique, but was shocked by inaccuracies & misrepresentations of publication history, tried to get fixed. @ColumbiaUP won’t make even minor corrections. For those who care about bg: not a reliable source.

[James Jackson @derJamesJackson]

After Hüseyin won a court case that his wife’s account couldn’t be frozen, German authorities froze his mother’s

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@etiennefd That's terribly clever!

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@SuperWinona @LyxPar yes - but that is something I could have got right on my own, was thrilled by the bit I would, left to my own devices, almost certainly have got wrong

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

for German learners: hat vorbeischwimmen sehen!

[Doktor Eder @lu_eder]

Wer mal zwei Entenmamas mit Küken an einander hat vorbeischwimmen sehen weiß: Die können weder zählen noch ihren Nachwuchs von anderem unterschieden.
Und den Küken ist das auch egal, solange vorne irgend ne Ente schwimmt.

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@norabird @skmadeleine Yes. (Also I see this was not the rate for 20 yrs, it was a 20-year-old book now selling at that rate.)

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@norabird @skmadeleine Yes, a good safeguard. I think one person was talking about the case of a book that sold 50 copies a year for 20 years, which sounded iffy (though I suppose author might have right of reversion but not care)

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@QxD5e Fabelhaft!

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@LyxPar As I say, I would have been faffing about.

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@LyxPar yes, I know, but it's the construction before "weiß" that I wouldn't put together without an example (would be faffing about feeling vaguely that it ought to be "gesehen"...)

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@writerofscratch Also, Keats was apparently bowled over by Chapman's Homer (like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes...), I think comical to most modern readers, J S Mill loved Pope's (& I think reading the original didn't change this) - wd be odd to argue with what these versions meant to them

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@lydialaurenson Yes, a friend told me he was hiring an independent fact-checker and it would probably cost $12,000-$15,000. (The book to be published by a reputable publisher.)

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@theo_nash Dionysius of Halicarnassus, say, Quintilian, so we would use the Loeb for want of something better. It would normally have been inconceivable to use a text with translation.

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@theo_nash The texts I read as an undergraduate were mainly OCTs (editions recommended in the Examination Decrees & Regs), tho Bowra's Pindar did not make the grade (for P & Bacchylides the Teubener was to be used). I think there were texts for which there was no good modern edition +

[Giulio Mattioli @giulio_mattioli]

This has been in my experience a bigger problem than fake citations.

We published 2 papers testing widespread (hyped) assumptions with empirical data, found that they don't really hold up.

They both get cited to support the hyped assumption, which persists.

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@mollytaft My understanding is that books, even academic books, aren't fact-checked, so a journalist might rely on a book for background that was littered with mistakes. It would be very time-consuming to write a document covering every single fact someone might want to use.

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@mollytaft When asked to give an interview last year I said I would like to see the text before publication & was told the paper didn't allow this, & the piece was published with errors that could have been fixed (like pieces by other interviewers, which is why I asked)

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@VirRomanus14 @DAMendelsohnNYC Interesting. Haven't seen it, but will look for it the next time I'm near a library likely to have it.

[Helen DeWitt @helendewitt]

@kohjingyu Reminds me of Robert Arkin's terrific book, Most Underappreciated: 50 Prominent Social Psychologists Describe Their Most Unloved Work. (The book itself seems to be undeservedly underappreciated.)