Thread 10: 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 ...
2nd Observer https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found
3rd Observer https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video
4th Observer ‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...
Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn
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New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting. There are currently 10 items on The Observer website The real Salt Path | The Observer

To all - No saltiness. Keep to the path. Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for nine very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in a healthy and civil fashion is very welcome.

Keep calm and eat fudge.

Thank you

As you say, I don’t think AI would have helped much unfortunately. And I don’t think it was around in 2018, when the book was published.

Artificial Intelligence was around in 2018, but not really much in use as an everyday work research tool. But the PP was pondering it as something that could be useful for the future, I believe.

@MrsKypp

She told him about them losing their home and that they had found a way to cure a terrible brain disease called CBD. She actually said the letters CBD and that it was a cure. That the cure was walking along the coastal path.

That's awful! I'm really sorry to hear of this.. :(

ETA: Were you tempted to interrupt and correct them? Did you?

I completely agree that publishers should have much more robust fact-checking in place now.

I just had a look and, interestingly, Belle Gibson’s infamous recipe book was also published by Penguin (Penguin Australia). After the BG revelations, I’d have thought Penguin would have been extra-vigilant to avoid a similar thing happening again.

But now, with the TSP revelations, Penguin have twice found themselves in hot water over fact-checking and illness discrepancies. I don’t know how much interaction PRH have with Penguin Australia, but I would’ve thought they’d had some connection and communication. I’m not at all saying this to sound superior, but just out of curiosity. Their reputation seems very dicey now.

But again, what exactly would they be checking? Evidence that she arrived and left Orkney at roughly the times she says? Medical records for her father’s psychiatric illness? Evidence of her drug use? Records of her stint in rehab? London places she lived and worked? Her RSPB jobs?

What would an equivalently damaging revelation be about The Outrun, anyway — that she was never an alcoholic? That she’d never lived in London? That she’s relapsed many times since? That she’d had a criminal past and dealt drugs?

I have no idea whether publishers, for instance, run DBS checks on their memoir authors, but presumably Raynor Winn/Sally Walker would have passed one, unless being questioned, but not charged, would show up?

@ThatFluentHedgehog I was very tempted but the train had other people and I kept my mouth shut.

I was a bit upset though. I really hated it when people advised me to eat some random item saying it would cure my cancer, or that I shouldn't go through all the chemo it would be better to do it through a particular diet. This is along those lines, far too similar and I don't want CBD patients being told that walking will cure their disease.

R Winn statement: We are accused of hiding behind pseudonyms. This is blatantly untrue. Like most, we use these nicknames alongside our legal names. The legal names we use on our bank records, our utility bills etc.

I still think the agents, who take a big cut, have responsibility here.

Not to be nit-picky, but it would be wise to check all those things - especially in light of the controversy with James Frey’s memoir, which has very similar themes and had a lot of fabricated content.

Again, I’m not at all suggesting any other memoir authors - other than those already found out- have fabricated their memoirs in a significant way. But I think it would be good to fact-check as much of that as possible, as we know memoirs can be fabricated.

Maybe I’m in the minority here, but putting myself in the shoes of a publisher, I’d be too wary of the reputational risk if I published a popular memoir which was later proved to be mostly false. I just keep thinking back to the scenes in Apple Cider Vinegar (the Netflix series about Belle Gibson) where she was being wined and dined by the publisher and there was no mention of fact-checking any of her story.

This is the kind of thing that terrifies me as an author & editor - factual error that slips through proofreading and appears in print for all to see & makes you look an idiot. Shudder. (To be fair, the Wall wasn't systematically demolished until 1990. But to be fairer, surely all of us who like SW/RW are old enough to remember "where we were when the Berlin Wall came down" are remembering a day in 1989...)

More thread feedback, this time from Tattle Life...

It's weird isn't it, that she did acknowledge the house raffle in the statement, but the house raffle is on the Gangani site, and that definitely has pseudonyms – additional to their noms de plume.

Indignant frothers unite!

Yes. It strikes me as weird too. A "genuine" house raffle but hidden identities.

The one thing that leapt out at me in the marketing frenzy of TSP was that Moth had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. That was the big emotional hook that made me sit up and take notice ( along with the homelessness of course) but it was this terminal illness that drew me in. I wanted to know what someone faced with the certainty of death had gained from this monumental walk. But he never was terminally diagnosed. He never was facing certain death. I'm sorry but it's not good enough to say that RW panicked and convinced herself..this is a non fiction factual book. She knew perfectly well what she was saying. It's unforgiveable in the way it misled.

To be clear, I completely agree that PRH SHOULD have checked the major facts. Absolutely. But they're claiming they needn't have.

It's interesting that PP referenced "relapsed many times since", highlights that a narrative once out there has a life of its own that doesn't necessarily match ongoing reality (or indeed in Raymoth case, past reality).

I don't have the article to hand, but was saddened to hear a year or two ago that the author of A Streetcat Named Bob relapsed several times since the books and film came out. Yet he's still referenced as someone who overcame his addictions and turned his life around, owing his recovery to a cat.

ETA: typo correction

But it’s not exactly a rare occurrence in the history of publishing. PRH was also the publisher for James Frey’s heavily fictionalised ‘memoir’, and didn’t suffer particular reputational damage, even though they settled a couple of US lawsuits brought by readers out of court and agreed to refund readers who could prove they’d bought it before the revelations were made.

The bestselling misery memoir Angela’s Ashes has been widely discredited. Tara Westover’s siblings dispute her account of their childhood. A Child Called It didn’t stand up to scrutiny, and there was that memoir of someone who pretended to have met his wife through barbed wire in a concentration camp. ‘Misery lit’ se3ms to have attracted a lot of of fakers.

The Gangani companies house has their real names.

Someone could specialise in indignant frothing?!

Sadly press doesn't always mean sales. I had articles in the Sunday Times, reviews on Radio 4 and appeared on Saturday Live for a book which, to this day, remains niche!

Only Tim Walker's – and to be fair I wouldn't usually expect publishers to research author's partners, despite including his names in my past post!

I didn't know publishers do a DBS check. I think they should also run a "real name" check.

As an aside, I'm wondering how legal it was to have put fake names for company directors on the Gangani website. I've been a director of 3 companies and you have to be very careful with that sort of thing.

Maybe someone who's done work experience as a barista? Also, there's nobody in specialising in ice creams and lollies (yet) - surely essential for seaside scenarios.

I'd image so. And it shouldn't be too difficult a thing to provide. In theory.

I hope I remember to put "Reporting for Indignant Froth duty" as my Thread 11 hello.

I have no idea if they do run DBS checks! I’ve never heard that they do! My point was only that presumably Sally Walker would have passed a DBS if they had done one, because she was never charged with the theft of the money from the Henmings estate agency.

But what I really came here to say, is, am I the only person who has seen Craig Brown doing the Garden Path by Raynor Winn in the diary in Diary in Private Eye? It's brilliant, but not online, so I will photograph it in a bit (have a whole afternoon of Actual Work to get through). They get mistaken for Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, among many other gems.