Drotte-Roche mixup

Tony Ellis · 17 Apr 2011, 19:18 · from 2011-April.txt.gz

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From: tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com (Tony Ellis)
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 20:18:42 +0100
Subject: (urth) Drotte-Roche mixup
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=GxiaEL7ie42YrMrp1K5m__eWLsQ at mail.gmail.com>

Jeff Wilson wrote:
> We do know that various office functions are still being expected of Sev
> as he writes. Time passes, Dr Talos comes and goes. Sev could as easily
> gone a final weekend trip, moved his bowels, and approved a dozen
> executions between writing "Roche" and "Drotte".

He takes a break on page *two* of his memoirs? In the middle of
writing an exciting bit? I don't find that very persuasive. Moreover,
the reason we know about these little interruptions is because
Severian tells us when they happen. If Wolfe wanted us to think that
Severian had made a memory slip across such an interruption, he could
have written it that way.

Antonio Marques:
> This is the part I find unbelievable. A mistake such as this doesn't
> happen on such a passage from such an author. First, it'd be much of a
> coincidence; second, it's the kind of stuff I'm positive he cares more
> about in his proof-readings; third, it's too conspicuous, I got it
> outright, dense as I am, and absolutely not on the lookout for such
> stuff at the time; fourth, it's right in the beginning of the book(s),
> with all the spotlights on it.

Wolfe is as fallible as every writer, and every writer makes mistakes.
And it doesn't matter how much Wolfe cares about getting it right. You
can't strap-on a larger brain just because you care.

Vigilance will net you 99% of the mistakes in a manuscript. But
doubling that vigilance will only net you 99.1%. Why? Because the
mistakes you miss are the ones where your brain doesn't *see* a
mistake at all. Wolfe spelt correctly all sorts of obscure and archaic
words in TSotT, but he still got a basic one, 'onagers', wrong. Why?
Because he *thought* it was the right spelling. Why did the
copy-editor miss it? Because he assumed that clever Mr Wolfe knew what
he was talking about. This is how mistakes get through.

I proofread for a living, and you wouldn't believe the things I see,
or the things that both I and the editor miss. I remember a writer who
wrote 'inseminate' when he meant 'estimate', and I'm not making that
up. Yesterday evening - and British TV viewers could back me up on
this one - I heard a BBC 2 announcer inform us that in a few minutes
we'd see a documentary in which Ernest Shackleton's ancestors retraced
his fateful journey to the Antarctic. I watched, but there was a
disappointing lack of zombies.

The fact that the Drotte-Roche mixup is in chapter I doesn't impress
me much either. Who are Drotte and Roche to us then but
interchangeable cyphers, the Merry and Pippin of future-earth? Here's
something else that's in Chapter I: a line that goes 'While he shifted
his ground I saw Vodalus wrench the knife free and drive it into the
leader's throat.'

Except that in my copies of TSotT, the letter 'f' is missing from the
third word. I kid you not.

Again, British readers could back me up on this. I have the 1981 Arrow
paperbacks, but I vaguely recall seeing the same mistake in later
imprints. I assume this is a typesetter's error and not found in US
editions, or someone would have mentioned it by now.

Finally, purely as a point of interest, in the manuscript Wolfe
submitted chapter I *wasn't* the beginning of the book anyway. It was
chapter II. It was moved because it made for a punchier opening.

So maybe everyone really was super-vigilant at proofreading the start
of the novel, and the mistake was missed when they all kicked back and
relaxed in chapter II.

Only joking. :-)

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