Thread 4: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

Second article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

Third article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^

Thread 2 Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Thread 3 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5369425-thread-3-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

Guardian article is interesting. Basically the publishers have no reason to care as long as it is legal

I haven't read the book but I thought I would try to guess if Moth wrote it by reading the prologue from Amazon's sample thingy:

"I was in awe. This man, who only two months earlier had struggled to put on his coat without help was standing on a beach in his underpants holding an erected...

...tent...."

It was an erected tent he was holding.

Sounds a bit written by a bloke to me.

@User14March your 'justified and ancient ' comment made me laugh out loud 😁
Showing my age there!

It's one of the odd interludes that don't quite work, like the running Simon Armitage gag. (You have a vision of an editor saying 'I don't really get this' and RW saying 'But it really happened!' And no, no idea why, even if they did believe Moth was the Poet Laureate, she would depict the beautiful PA and the nanny massaging a topless Moth while his wife took photos, and Grant asking whether he could use the photos for 'publicity' for a wine business...?)

I wondered if RW had included it because 'Grant' tells Raynor a tall tale. According to him, he tramped with a knapsack all over Europe, living on fresh air, ended up sleeping rough in an Italian vineyard, learned everything he could about wine, then came home and started wine trading out of a disused warehouse until he made his millions and attracted 'all the beautiful girls in his household'-- then his wife says 'Take no notice. He studied wine in evening classes and his father got him a job with a wine trader.'

After which there is the now much-picked-over line:

I thought about Grant’s tale and why he felt driven to tell it. When you tell a story, the first person you must convince is yourself; if you can make yourself believe it’s true, then everyone else will follow. Grant wanted to be the person he had created: hard done by, struggling through life’s adversities, but making good on his own wits, rather than the son of a wealthy father with connections.

She goes on to say their own story was 'created out of self-protection' to avoid being 'othered' and rejected as homeless, by changing only one word in their otherwise true story, that they had 'sold', rather than 'lost', their home.

I laughed too.

We only have Sally's word for the company being "a bit of a mess". Painting herself as the saviour, like for all those decrepit weirdly gifted buildings, and Moth's health...

This link has now been deactivated...

It read to me as if they were being dismissive of careers as a concept – work is for other people etc. So the only way they could write a professional bio was derisively. "Aren't we ridiculous and hilarious?" Erm, no.

When someone tells you who they are, listen…NB: Raymoth. Yes, noted same upthread. Are ‘Grant’ & his coterie ‘real’? He sounded a bit Grant Mitchell, bald & gravelly.

I just started listening to the audio book and before the prologue even starts, the opening quote is:

"Tell me about a complicated man, Muse, tell me how he wandered". - Homer

Strange that "Sally" would choose this and not a quote about... Overcoming the odds... Or how a couple's bond can weather any storm... Or how nature provides salvation... Or something.

If he was it would solve the riddle in the book of Raynor Winn saying Moth Winn's real name is Ray, i.e. he is "Raynor"!

oh interesting, wonder why

I think the whole "moth wrote the books" is such a ridiculous rabbit hole to go down.

I don't think I'd have an issue with most of that -- he'd talked about it a lot on social media in advance, people knew he was on the walk, and there were dates booked in for readings etc along the way, and he he invited people to walk with him as they wished. Also (I thought people knew this, but maybe not?), he walked with no money. I mean, I'm assuming he had an emergency stash, but the whole idea of the walk was that he would show up on foot to a community hall or church or pub or private house along the walk on a pre-arranged date and barter bed and food and luggage transfer to his next location in exchange for reading. (He'd done the same thing earlier on the Pennine Way.)

So not surprising he walked much faster than the Walkers. He wasn't carrying any thing other than water and waterproofs, and that people had a vague expectation of seeing him on the path around the time the Walkers were on it, The BBC actually sent a reporter after him on the path for a comment when Seamus Heaney died (which lines up with Moth getting a big response to him reading from Heaney's Beowulf translation for money in St Ives.)

This is a review of the book SA wrote about it.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/03/walking-away-simon-armitage-review-south-west-coast-path

But I still think that the gag in TSP gets quite tiresome, even if people did think Moth was SA.

Agreed.

Women write male protagonists much more than men write female protagonists. Women will read books by men and women, with male and female protagonists, in quite equal proportions, whereas men tend to only read books written by and about men. Male protagonists are therefore seen as infinitely more desirable than female as they will sell to everyone. See stats in Mary Ann Sieghart’s book The Authority Gap.

I can see absolutely no reason why the couple would have decided Tim would do the writing and Sally take all the credit.

Personally I think Sally/Raynor wrote the book. I think that there are probably some elements of truth in the story but that a lot of it is distortion and fantasy.
She sounds like one of those people who is a perpetual victim and never takes responsibility for her own behaviour or thinks about the impact of what she says and does on other people.
I think Tim/Moth does have an illness but that she has dramatised everything and put out the worst possible scenario to attract attention, while actually she knew that the progress of the disease is "indolent".
It's Sally too that stole the money, although Tim must have been aware what was going on.
They seem to have got away with a lot because outwardly they look quite personable but it looks like they have been flying by the seat of their pants and living above their means for years-a picture of entitlement.
The people who know them and have commented negatively seem to think they are both pathological liars . Men and women are equally capable of deception.

MOO MOO

Very confused as to why she thought publishing the NHS letters would help, all they seem to do is prove she lied that he had a clear terminal diagnosis in 2013. The first letter mentioning his ‘indolent’ neurological disorder seems to be 2015

why not publish the letter saying he was definitely suffering from CBD in 2013? Unless he wasn’t.

dont get me wrong, I’m sorry he is genuinely ill, but it’s not the circumstances she describes in the book by a very long shot

Couldn't agree more!

Here's an interview with Sally Raworth from Waterstones, 54 minutes in Moth gets dragged in and is asked about Raynor's writing ability.
He is arguably a better speaker than his wife.
Joint Collab?

For me, if the whole "Simon Armitage mistaken identity" thing is made up or at least well overegged it doesn't really matter (although the whole massage incident reads very oddly) Mothtim looks nothing whatever like SA but no Poet Laureates were harmed by the running gag. Same with occasionally getting a bus, they weren't in an official race.

The trouble is that when serious misleading is uncovered, everything goes under the spotlight.

Also, she must know exactly who this is and would have done much better to say “It’s true I had forgotten about that debt so I contacted the garage yesterday and have now paid him what I owed.” But everything is someone else’s responsibility!

It’s like she’s pretending to have total amnesia about her former life.

That's just something made up by SW/RW(or even TW) for the story. There wasn't a friend's property portfolio investment, they were given a loan of 100k + 18% interest by a distant relative, that they didn't repay.

Personally I think he's equally culpable and hiding behind her or they've both decided she's the spokesperson.

Well I never knew all that. So he walked the SWCP in 2013 with no money and published a book about it in 2015… just as our plucky heroes / grifters (delete as appropriate) were getting a maybe diagnosis of a terminal illness and wondering where their next source of non embezzled funds were coming from. And then they also wrote a book about walking the SWCP with no money but they amped up the sympathy vote as they also had no home and for one of them no expected future. What similarities!

The controversy over TSP doesn't seem to have harmed her book sales one iota TSP is #2 in Amazon UK sales this week!

Maybe PRH will forge ahead with the October launch of 'On Winter Hill'.