Thread 18: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

Hello all. I've simplified the opening post as I don't think we need to keep reposting all the links, timelines and so on at this stage of proceedings.

The Observer's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...
First thread: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Links to threads 2-16, the other 20 Observer articles and videos to date, Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement, our timeline and sources can all be accessed in the OP and first few posts of Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5403285-thread-17-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 are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer exposé items before posting.
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 drive-by scolders 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 17 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.

Now three months in, if these threads could wear slogan t-shirts they would be Mark Twain's often misquoted 'The report of my death was an exaggeration'. Applications in writing from correspondents seeking supply parcels of fudge and cider will be tolerated.

Here we are again
Disappointed as can be
All good pals and jolly good company
Strolling round the path
Happy on a spree
All good pals and jolly good company

Never mind the weather, never mind the rain
Now that we're together, whoops we go again!
Whoops, we go again
La-di-da-di-da, la-di-da-di-dee
All good pals and jolly good company

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

@RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays There are quite a few examples of SW being misleading by vagueness.

Yes, thanks, and don't vast numbers of interviewers just let her do this?

I can think of only two incidents where she is actually put on the spot - both over the question of the name 'Moth'.

The on-the-ball Australian radio show host who insists: Oh come on, you have to tell us.
And Sal replies: No, I don't.

The other is a literary festival when she is asked about the name 'Moth'. This time she says: "I can't believe you don't get it" or some such phrase - I thought: obfuscation to the point of rudeness.

But, she did get away with it, all of it. She thrived, and made loads of dosh, was the guest star at ever more festivals, film premieres, and gigs and was on course to do fabulously out of 'wellness retreats' .....

I don't see the problem with Moth, actually, I think it's pretty good.
What's the difference?
tiMOTHy
eLIZabeth

Yes, I really don't understand all the people scratching their heads and unable to work out why Tim might be called Moth for short. I know LOADS of Moths (usually those lads who were too pretentious to use 'Tim').

I bet Xander has them puzzled....

It doesn't matter at all what either of them are called. What matters is that they did not want anyone to know their true names. Their real names. The ones they always used at work, to people they met - to everyone.

Raynor does not give away the name Sally. Moth could give away the name Timothy.

It's not the using Moth that is strange, it's using his wife's maiden name, if it had been decided when they married to use it, nothing odd with that, what seems stinky is changing the surname post embezzlement, we have had discussions on these threads about writing under a pen name and it was established that some authors spouses have used the same name, but this was about both of them hiding their true identities.

Brilliant post. So eloquently put. Thank you!

Yes, that’s correct but I added this because it’s yet another example of the Raynor Winn brand being a load of rubbish and completely unworthy. The book group objectors need to base their opinions on some facts. They need to see myth and reality side by side. The rebuttal has acknowledged the book raffle although not admitted who wrote the book in question, granted, but we can see from the excerpts that have been salvaged that it is comparable to the style of TSP. A copy of this book now has Golden Ticket status.

@HatStickBoots (Re: HNTDDD) we can see from the excerpts that have been salvaged that it is comparable to the style of TSP

This my sense of humour ... but I was wondering if someone who was well-read, but did not know anything about TSP, would think it was written by Paddy Dillon, Mark Wallington or Cheryl Strayed ... or maybe a team effort?

Re: Strayed:
The New York Times, said that unlike many parallel-arc stories, the author's two parallel narratives—the challenging hike itself and the difficult life events that preceded it—are delivered in perfect balance (edited from Wikipedia)

I haven't read Wild - would anyone recommend?

Would 100% recommend reading Wild - I loved it! Thankfully I read it years before reading TSP, so I had none of the cynicism and suspicion I will now forever have when reading a memoir 😂 Just to confirm though that there is no reason to believe that Wild is fabricated! It’s also really well written and has become one of my favourite books.

It is interesting that it was published March 2012 - and then the film in 2014. Other posts have pointed out the lack of food parallel with TSP.

Perhaps behind the scenes now, SW is coaching TW in pretending to be Izzy Wyn-Thomas so she can keep the Bland Prize.

@BeguiledBrandy, I didn't much like Wild when I first read it, but I reread it last year and it had grown on me.

The author is entirely upfront about how screwed-up her life was before she started to walk the Pacific Crest Trail. Not just that her mother died terribly young and the family fell apart afterwards, her stepfather disengaging from CS and her siblings, and her marriage falling apart, but also lots of risky behaviour, poor decisions, unwise relationships, drink and drugs etc.

(Which you may think makes a refreshing change from 'We blamelessly lost our home and are entirely adorable'!)

The type of terrain is also entirely different -- the walk is something like 1,100 miles, through several states, so much longer, and often much further from any settlements at all, and more dangerous terrain and wildlife. Discovering a watersource gone dry is a potentially fatal problem, there's dangerous snowfall, and she narrowly escapes sexual assault by two campers at one point. The parts she skips are because of impassable snow on high mountain passes, for instance. (Not 'That bit looks dull!') It takes four to six months to 'thru-hike' the whole trail, and needs a lot of pre-planning because the only way to resupply yourself en route is to post yourself packages to post offices on the way. And you need permits for things like using a camping stove. The official website has advice about the risks and benefits of carrying a gun.

It's a very different experience to walking the SWCP, where you're never that far from a water source or a town.

@FishwivesSalute Thanks. That does sound different - but the marketing of the book made it sound more familiar:

"... she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise - a promise of piecing together a life that lay in ruins at her feet.
Strayed's account captures the agonies ... of her incredible journey; how it maddened and terrified her, and how, ultimately, it healed her.

Re: It's a very different experience to walking the SWCP, where you're never that far from a water source or a town.

Except for when you're a tortoise. Another walk I did, last week, was for the first time. Later, I thought I'll just see what TSP says about that bit where there is a lush, grassy plateau. Well, it was the tortoise on a lead. I couldn't believe it as it is not just far from any residence but, unusually, far from anywhere you could park. It is just silly!

Still makes me scratch my head/chuckle when I read the blurb on the Gangani Publishing website about "the team", bearing in mind that the Walkers' were staking the future of their house selling and repaying their debts on the lottery scheme!

At Gangani we're looking for books that have an alternative edge, from authors that aren't afraid to muddy the water, but who don't have a slot in the mainstream publishing world. Unknown authors can put their ebooks into mass market outlets and remain just that - unknown - lost in the mass. But put all those voices from Wales onto one platform and we can create a portrait of our modern literary life. Stronger together.
We're very proud to be offering our first book in print, <a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120703185144/www.ganganipublishing.co.uk/collections/frontpage" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How not to Dal Dy Dir by <a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120703185144/www.ganganipublishing.co.uk/pages/authors" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Izzy Wyn-Thomas. We chose this one as we're fairly certain it will cause a stir, and isn't that what all good stories do; start a discussion, start an argument, cause a stir, make us think. We want our authors voices to be heard in their true form, so our books are now and will remain self-edited, that way we'll hear their words undiluted, unsmoothed, as they were really meant to be.
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Duncan Hendry - Financial Controller
Career highlight - losing £300 000 in the RBS crash

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Paul Calais - Editor, Literary Advisor
Career highlight - having his motor cycle helmet surgically removed.

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Paul studied English Literature in Derby, before pursuing the career of motorcycle courier, distributing his literary confetti far and wide. With his true poetic personality he's spent much of his life on the hills and beaches of Wales and wild places across the world. His acid literary criticism can be relied on to bring any author to heel.

And yet at one talk where RW was asked by an audience member what nature writers she likes, she skirts around the question with vagueness ("there's so much"), ending up not naming a single book or writer. She does mention she's about to start Finding Hildasay by Christian Lewis having been sent it by the publisher, but that's it. That suggests to me she doesn't read much, which is fine, but just say so!

And even if the book is ambiguous, RW has said in interviews Moth was given two years to live. I think a recent one posted here not long ago even suggested he had 2 months to live.

Anybody know who this author is?

I couldn't hear this interview perfectly but I am sure she says, near the end, that if they do a particularly long walk, of about 200 miles, then the effect lasts Moth for a year. How bizarre and convenient. So you can stave off enquiries/write another book about that and then it all starts up again? He must have a powerful lithium battery implanted in him somewhere ....

I think that was very much Penguin's marketing trying to make TSP sound more like Wild!

(Come to think of it, Cheryl Strayed had just as much right to call herself 'homeless' as the Walkers, only she doesn't -- she's been bumming around different states doing casual jobs and living in rentals and sleeping in her truck, she'd sold virtually everything she'd owned to fund food for the trail, no savings. and when, the night before she starts the trail, she stays at a motel and has to give a home address, she has to make one up, because her family home is gone, she's recently divorced and in only in intermittent contact with her siblings and friends. She doesn't even have the option of TW's brother's house to use as a postal address. Or a devoted husband (or indeed anyone) by her side throughout the walk.)

I do think SW read Wild, though, and copied some beats from it. Though I suppose some of them are pretty much baked into the 'walking a long distance path' genre -- a 'grabby' prologue about a moment of peril, the awfulness you're walking away from, not being able to stand up wearing your pack at the start etc.

But I think there's definitely an element of SW trying for some of the same effects as CS. Like CS starts the trail at one of the driest parts in the Mojave desert, where even the fittest and most experienced hikers can't always get to the next water source within a day and has to carry 25 pounds of water on her, so SW puts in the 'dangerously short of water and 38 degrees' episode. Or carrying a 'useless' book of poetry, despite the weight -- CS reads Adrienne Rich out loud in her tent when she's afraid on her first night out when she finds mountain lion droppings outside in the morning.

@FishwivesSalute CS reads Adrienne Rich out loud in her tent when she's afraid on her first night out when she finds mountain lion droppings outside in the morning.

Oh my! We can't quite recreate that scene on the SWCP. I was, unintentionally, in a 'face off' with a Dartmoor pony last week. It was blocking the path and I didn't want to make it panic or fall off the cliff, myself.

Cheryl sounds very independent and brave.

From the Gangani blurb (thanks @izzywizzyletsgetbizzywynthomas )

Translation

We want our authors voices to be heard in their true form, so our books are now and will remain self-edited, that way we'll hear their words undiluted, unsmoothed, as they were really meant to be.

Translation: we can't afford proper editors and wouldn't want to pay them if we could.

Agree @Vroomfondleswaistcoat 😁? (Resident author)

If Raymoth were hiking in the Rockies and came across a grizzly, she'd probably say that it turned its nose up at their noodles and wandered off because it obviously despised them as tramps.

@FishwivesSalute

CS reads Adrienne Rich out loud in her tent when she's afraid on her first night out when she finds mountain lion droppings outside in the morning.

The mountain lion would mistake Timoth for SA and offer him a Victoria sponge.

Absolutely. Either we're too mean to pay or we can't find a proper editor with accredited credentials so we're going to pretend that 'original voices unsmoothed' isn't synonymous with complete and utter self-absorbed garbage. I mean, i've been writing published novels for nearly 20 years and have a pretty good idea how books and story telling works, and my editor still finds stuff that needs work. Nothing to do with 'diluting my voice' and everything to do with turning out books that don't have huge plotholes, pages of self indulgent nonsense, and weeks made up entirely of Wednesdays.

Writers are not the best people to know whether what they have written is what other people will want to pay to read. It's not ABOUT the author, it's about the reader, the person who has had to part with hard earned cash.

Thanks @Vroomfondleswaistcoat . I've (I'm sure we all have) read books that have actually clearly been through a proper editing process and occasionally the odd thing can make you go "Really? But 2 chapters ago they didn't know what they now seem to?" so what sort of abomination HNTDDD was I can't imagine.

Even professional editors aren't infallible... Except mine, obviously. Saint of a woman, absolute saint. <checks behind slightly nervously>

I did Google reverse search and found the poncho but not the author!