Thread 16: 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's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

The 14 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer

More from The Observer:
‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...
The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)
I will link to two more Observer videos in the first post of this thread.

The Observer YouTube Channel: The Observer UK - YouTube

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn

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?^

Threads 2-11: Links all in the OP of Thread 12

Thread 12: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 13: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5386458-thread-13-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

Thread 14: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5388981-thread-14-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently a number of interesting items on The Observer website and linked to above.

To all - 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. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea. 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 fifteen 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 our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

Yes, it really is Thread 16.

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge be with you.

Just going back to last night for a moment, @mauvishagain 's posts including the surname of Scott on TW's side reminded me that one of the people named on the Gangani Publishing website was Tim Scott. We suspected this would be TW but, finding out Scott is a family name and knowing their propensity for using family names, we would seem to have been right.

Having watched that video, my senses are telling me she’s a fantasist.

Much of general interest has emerged from this rather sad saga so that, to my DW's annoyance, I am finding it hard to simply "let go" - and to get on with more important jobs like tidying the garden before the winter sets in!
Here are just two facts which have interested me :-
Firstly just how easy it was to hoodwink myself (and of course many others) that, even after reading TSP from cover to cover, I still believed it to be the "gospel truth"! (It was only after viewing the film version, especially the opening scene with JI faithfully portraying Moth's limp, that I started to have doubts.)

This "deception" was achieved, as has been discussed earlier, by a combination of factors :- Respected Publisher/"Unflinchingly honest" story/Attractive cover/Author's assurance that the "contents were true"/The actual storyline of triumph over adversity/ The medical miracle - achieved simply through walking. The very formula which enabled the book to become a ST best-seller.

The other fact which has emerged and which really surprised me, were some comments from the general public, words to the effect that "I didn't realise we had such wonderful scenery/landscape etc. in this country".
I read recently that there are plans - if and when funds permit - to join up all the existing paths so as to form a continuous coastal circuit of the island - that's presumably a massive route taking in England, Wales and Scotland. Up one side and down the other!
Ironically it seems that SWRW - by writing TSP then LL as a sequel - had inadvertently anticipated this development!

I read recently that there are plans - if and when funds permit - to join up all the existing paths so as to form a continuous coastal circuit of the island - that's presumably a massive route taking in England, Wales and Scotland. Up one side and down the other!

And there we have it, book number 5! Careful @UpfromSomerset you'll be giving them both ideas. Poor old 'Moth' will have to get back into character, put on his walking boots and bandana, clasp his trusty copy of Beowulf and sally forth right the way around the land with his Mrs! Coastal fudge sellers and campsite owners better start taking precautions.

Or maybe they'll just have a few short trips, read some books and blogs, and creatively write about it.

That kind of appropriation is so often a factor in fake memoirs, like that one about being a mixed race child in the care system involved in gang violence and drug dealing in ghetto LA that turned out to be by a white thirtysomething creative writing student who'd grown up in her biological family in a wealthy area of California.

I came across this 2008 article by Tom Sykes, author of a somewhat tiresome Old Etonian-NY-nightlife-columnist booze memoir, which he submitted just after the James Frey controversy, and in which he says they went through it with a lawyer in detail and even made him get in touch with his drug dealer to corroborate details:

My book is an addiction memoir as well, and so my publisher sat me down with a lawyer, who went through the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb, determined to root out any inaccuracies or embellishments. They then encouraged me to send excerpts of the manuscript to anybody who was mentioned in the book, and get them to confirm that what I had written about them was accurate.

This seemed over the top to me (whatever happened to publish and be damned?) but it was a paranoid time in memoir-land, so I went along with it, even tracking down old school friends I hadn't seen for 20 years and sending them emails that said things such as: "Er, Hi, I've written a book and you're in it. This is what I wrote about you. Is it OK?"

This was also published by Penguin, but clearly the mood of 'paranoia in memoirland' had abated by ten years later...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/mar/24/biography.publishing

I'm the same. I have a high bar for my suspension of disbelief. It infuriates my OH.

I've seen/heard that question asked about why walk etc. RW usually fends it off with something like "yes, it may seem crazy and totally illogical, and perhaps it was, but it just seemed like the best idea at the time...[let's out a breathy smile]. And we needed a reason to go on, a map to show us the way, yadda yadda." Next question...

I imagine it wasn't probed further because trust had been established towards the claims of it being true to life, no doubt because a big publisher was behind it as well.

I kind of wish CH had arranged an interview with RW, before her exposé, under the pretense of film promotion and then dropped question after question so we could see her true reaction when put on the spot.

It's a really useful skill in a first reader or editor, though. A novelist friend of mine's book had been read, reread, edited, line edited, copy-edited etc, and it took her deeply logical husband to point out that the sun had set twice during a particularly big scene.

Well connected! Sounds about right.

It was fairly obvious already that Tim Scott was meant to be TW given the biog blurb, but now I rethink about it, does this blurb not also mention Tim Scott having an ecology degree? That would be the 2nd time a fake degree has been attributed to TW then. It's always useful to look for patterns.

She is suggesting she and moth are the only ones good enough to be entitled to feel it is ""their" path, "their" nature, "their" history. The rest of us, locals or visitors, don't belong there the way she and moth do. Because we're inferior and undeserving

It would have been interesting if CH had played it that way. But I suspect there would have been too much of a risk of it not getting published?

I don’t know the ins and outs of what’s permissible in journalism now and I guess many news publishers tread more carefully. If CH had secured an interview on the basis of film promotion and then turned it into an inquisition, would it have been easier for SW’s lawyer to block publication? Or SW might have claimed huge distress and a mental health crisis after the interview and the newspaper would have backed off?

As it turned out, it seems the guardian approached SW multiple times in the run up to the article and she just didn’t respond. Head firmly buried in sand. Which perhaps she regrets now if she thinks she might have been able to play things differently. Who knows?

That's very interesting @YarrowYarrow - indeed , that level of care and attention seems to have been very short -lived!

Well put...this is exactly what i was getting at.

These moments of questionable character are the "unflinchingly honest" glue to help everything else stick.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat

"I have the kind of logical mind which makes watching films with me an absolute torture for others. I am constantly saying 'well, how does that work then? You just said X and now Y is happening, which wouldn't be the case if, as you said, X...' Plotholing, it's called and I do it in books too."

Plotholing - great word. I like reading crime thrillers and trying to work out logically who the perpetrator is and how they did it. I come from a family of offenders and their enablers and have seen the deceit and lies up close. I'm not suggesting the Walkers, or anyone else associated with this saga, are in any way as bad as my relatives but there are some common traits. The lack of conscience, selfishness, the superiority and how well-spoken, seemingly respectable men and women can get away with crimes and manipulation.

Of course, this kind of background can make one too cynical or mistrustful but it has its uses.

Interesting that the attached article states specifically that the walk began at Minehead on 13 August 2013.

Raynor Winn on the unexpected perks of walking The Salt Path | Woman & Home

Oh, I wasn't being serious. I just like to imagine if it were a TV journalist who uncovered it all.

I don't think that could have happened in reality for the CH and the Observer, which is ultimately looking for print sales/subscriptions from the scoop. Though I can't see how there'd be a legal reason why they couldn't still publish as the interview wouldn't change anything from a legal perspective, even if the interview was arranged as a non-film related one. But the scoop might be lost and would also potentially present ethical questions by suddenly dropping RW in it.

@SimoArmo These moments of questionable character are the "unflinchingly honest" glue to help everything else stick.

Yes, she/they are saying this is the very worst of me/us, this is the depths of our flawed moral code - caused only by sheer desperation, by the way - and therefore you really don't need to go looking under any stones for anything else. Look this way.

Oh dear, what have I done?!
Thankfully, though, in the real world it remains to be seen just how the publication of book #4 - OWH - is dealt with and whether any are sold. So pretty sure book #5 will never see the light of day. (but possibly a job for Paddy Dillon?

In a previous incarnation I was a technical author (lab equipment) and my output of catalogue copy/advertising leaflets/instruction manuals all required very careful proofreading. So I tend to easily spot typos etc.
Here's just two - from a MN poster and from a link to an article/book review -
"Porlock Weird" - well yes, it is a strange place.
Then in the article "Landlines" stood uncorrected as "Landmines". Or was it a deliberate error?

I've been amusing myself imagining the type of scenario Tom Sykes describes, where his editor sat him down with a lawyer and the MS and went through it with a fine-tooth comb, weeding out inaccuracies and embellishments, and urging him to contact literally everyone mentioned in it to send them the relevant extracts of the MS to check they agreed with its accuracy (which leads to some quite funny moments, where his drug dealer has no issue with being depicted as selling him vast amounts of cocaine and ecstasy but objects to being depicted as using non-standard grammar.)

I assume part of this editorial 'paranoia' was because it was a memoir which contains a lot of drinking and drugging at Eton, then in his life as a journalist in NY, so potentially high-profile, litigious partners in crime, and because he was a gossipy journalist with an eye for a good story that might not be true, plus he was off his face for the vast majority of the events he's writing about, so recollections might vary etc.

One assumes that, apart from the post-James Frey paranoia calming down, that the reason something similar wasn't done with TSP was precisely because the Walkers were very much not hard-bitten, ritzy New York Post columnists doing coke and getting thrown out of clubs. They were sweet, wholesome, adorably homeless wild campers who listened to the cricket and watched bunnies hop about their tent. Plus, most of the people they write about they don't know by name, because they're chance encounters on the path.

But yes, can you imagine an adversarial publishing lawyer sitting down with SW and her editor and saying 'OK, first of all, I need all the real names and paperwork for the court case you describe, and then, even if it feels insensitive, I'm going to need to see proof of diagnosis. Then you're going to have to send the relevant sections to Cooper, Polly, Jan, Anna, Moth's brother, Dave and Julie, your children, the manager of the Treen campsite etc.'

What on earth would SW have done?

Much is made of the incredibly hot weather encountered on TSP. If we had started on schedule rather than been laid up at Jan's house for a fortnight we would have dodged the worst of the heat.

When they meet Grant near Bude he says that it has been as hot as 38F but the temperature in the afternoon has dropped to a more reasonable 34F.

However, looking at the weather records for Cornwall in Aug 2013 it seems to have been pretty mild with most days between 17-19F

If Grant exists and/or such a conversation happened, it could be that he took the ambient air temperature reading from his car, which is often unreliable on hotter days due to heat from the engine and from the road heating up in direct sunlight. So it's hard to call this one out...plus it's only what he says to them.

Who knows, maybe RW also added a few degrees on for embellishement and make it seem their situation was worse than it was. (PS, it would be degrees C not F)

Sorry that should read C not F

I'm not sure if SW is a fantasist but she seems to fit some of the criteria according to Google research! I have come across 2 or 3 proper fantasists in life. They can be quite plausible - until they're not. And once you have rumbled them it can be quite unsettling. You then cannot trust a word they say ever again.

Yes, I’m not sure what kind of fantasist she is, but Sally wishes she were Raynor and she isn’t, she can’t be and never will be. Might be basic insecurity, might be a personality disorder, I don’t know, I just feel she isn’t being authentic. But who knows? Just my personal reaction.

I also wonder if part of the success of the books has been because they are a very telegenic couple? Moth we know all about, his gorgeousness is without question (sarcasm, unless you are SA, in which case it goes through on a nod), but SW, with her regular features and long sweeping hair, plus being white and of middle class attributes (like being reasonably well spoken) is a very 'saleable' proposition.

I wonder if, had SW been missing her front teeth and swearing every other word and if Moth had had the 'car up on bricks' look about him,would PRH even have taken the book on, let alone given them so many opportunities to talk about it?

@UpfromSomerset In a previous incarnation I was a technical author (lab equipment) and my output of catalogue copy/advertising leaflets/instruction manuals all required very careful proofreading. So I tend to easily spot typos etc. Here's just two - from a MN poster and from a link to an article/book review - "Porlock Weird" - well yes, it is a strange place. Then in the article "Landlines" stood uncorrected as "Landmines". Or was it a deliberate error?

Some of our most memorable moments have come about from unintentional mistakes on the threads!