Sure , mayhap Philip Roth won about a hundred literary prize , and maybe he ’s one of the most realized living American author , but thanks to Wikipedia ’s moronic convention about needing secondary sources , he was n’t allowed to correct factual fault about his own rule book . So he strike up his mighty pen anddid somethingabout it — he created his own informant .
Today , in fact , we ’re so very thankful for the idiocy of Wikipedia ’s guidelines and of for its power - drunk editor . Thanks to all that tomfoolery Philip Roth wrote thiswonderful open letterto the collaborative encyclopedia asking its overlords to make up inaccurate informationin the articleabout his novel The Human Stain . Roth was overturned that the clause belie the inhalation for the 361 - pageboy depressathon of a novel , but when he initially wrote the site asking them to compensate the misplay , he was told he did n’t count as a believable source . As he writes in The New Yorker :
Yet when , through an prescribed conversational partner , I of late petition Wikipedia to cancel this misstatement , along with two others , my interlocutor was told by the “ English Wikipedia Administrator”-in a letter see August 25th and handle to my middleman - that I , Roth , was not a credible source : “ I understand your point that the author is the greatest sureness on their own work , ” write the Wikipedia Administrator-“but we want secondary seed . ”
What ? Ugh no dazed atrocious why .
Seeing no other choice , Roth make to his computer or typewriter or whatever it is that the 79 twelvemonth - old writer uses and banged out 2635 words of Au , explaining that The Human Stain , perverse to the Wikipedia clause ’s assertions , was inspired by the living of Princeton University sociology professor Melvin Tumin , and not by the life of Anatole Broyard . It ’s a lovely read .
But by save the letter of the alphabet and publishing it , Roth really circumvent the cretin at Wikipedia by creating the secondary source necessary to update the clause . It has since been retool with the correct information . Booya Wikipedia , booya . [ WikipediaandThe New Yorker ]
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