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.

This article from 2019 (judging by the url) refers to Moth Walker too.
Raynor Winn and her husband, Moth Walker, have been together since college.
https://eu.dispatch.com/story/entertainment/books/2019/03/17/couple-s-journey-is-walk/5692567007/

Actually, it seems to be used in a few articles from around that time, so I think your press release idea may be correct, DreamyHiker.

Thanks. This is the same book editor - but for TSP.

Oh, I’m sure not, but why would their real surname appear on a US press release but in none of the UK publicity material?

Carelessness on the part of Penguin?

Laurie Hertzel Star Tribune (Minneapolis) | The Columbus Dispatch is really knowledgeable. She is a real fan but she has picked up on this:

People they encounter along the way often mistake Moth, with his tall frame and white hair, for the famous hiking poet Simon Armitage. (The two actually look nothing alike.)

Carelessness on the part of Penguin?
Maybe it's simply that the house style of the US PR people is to include the surnames of everyone mentioned in the press release. They emailed the UK office, which saw no concern with giving TimMoth's real surname!

evening all, and finally found you all and caught up <heaves self over side of the Ark and grabs fudge>. Thank you @DisappointedReader for starting yet another thread (sterling service, my lovely) and to everyone for continuing the interesting discussion. I've been out of action because of the usual freshers' flu, so sympathies to everyone else struck down and recovering. I raise a glass of Night Nurse to you all.

I also feel sorry for Simon Armitage, now, like Angela Harding, linked to that pair. Hopefully as time moves on both will shake off said link. Btw, SA was on the Craig Charles afternoon show on 6 Music last week with Jackie Kay, celebrating National Poetry week. I'd thoroughly recommend a listen. Jackie Kay doing a spoof of SA's poetry was v v funny, and vice versa. They're clearly good mates.

And I'm also clearly The Wrong Sort, having not been contacted by journalists <Lynda Snell sniff>. Interesting if Chloe H is still collecting further info behind the scenes. I'm still v curious about the move to Wales and what might lie behind that.

@TonstantWeader I think Simon Armitage is creatively moving on regardless. I saw today that his poetry collection, 'Dwell', has just been shortlisted for one of the 'Books are my Bag' readers' awards. It was apparently inspired by The Lost Gardens of Heligan south of St Austell. I hope we get a copy in the shop so I can read it in a quiet moment. It looks lovely. https://www.simonarmitage.com/works/dwell/
ETA. get well soon!

Wow this thread is still going!

I just popped in to see if it was as I heard Angela Harding trailed for Desert Island Discs today.

It's still interesting, though, that this never once appears to have come up in relation to UK press releases, where, one assumes, 'Moth' was just called Moth, with no surname given, especially as TW seems to have leaned in to the assumption that both their surnames were Winn, if he ran the London Marathon as 'Moth Winn'.

US fact-checking in journalism can be incredibly rigorous (Roddy Doyle has a funny anecdote currently doing the rounds as part of a thing about Irish writers being published in the New Yorker, about being contacted by a New Yorker fact checker who told him that a Dublin road name in one of his short stories was wrong, that it was X Road rather than X Avenue, and he was all 'WTF, I've lived nearby for about twenty years, I'm right!' until he realised the fact checker was in fact right, having gone to the library and looked up a map of suburban Dublin!), but I wouldn't have thought it was usual to take quite that much trouble over a book review/puff piece from a press release...?

@FishwivesSalute It's more that New Yorker fact checking is famously intense. Not so for many other American publications (not having a dig at them, I mean just not any different to anywhere else in journalism that is massively underresourced).

(I've written for many US publications and can absolutely see how this would simply be a misreading/ mistake, I don't think there's anything deep here).

Ah, but these are the never ending threads. The story with no end. The threads we can never leave.

I feel like I should give an evil cackle now and clank some chains.

I am delighted to have returned. I thought it was because I'd finally picked up a free copy of TSP this week, and can actually read the book....
... but now I'm wondering whether there are more sinister forces at work, that have dragged me back to another thread!

Thanks for the new thread Disappointed. I fell off the old one somewhat and have been catching up.

The discussion about the visitors’ centre where Timoth was allegedly mistaken for SA by ‘three old ladies’ had steam coming out of my ears (not the discussion but the quoted passage from the book). They were of course so ‘old’ and doddery, these ‘ladies’, that they barely knew what day it was, but handsome, charismatic Timoth could wrap them round his little finger! All hail Timoth!

HAH. Add ageism to Salray’s list of charming foibles. Remind me again - this is the woman who complained incessantly and with force about being labelled as ‘old’ by everyone throughout the [insert timeline caveats here] walk? And she goes right on and does it herself to others.

DARVO in action.

Are you saying that you think that the Minnesota Star Tribune journalist getting TW's surname correct was just an error, and that it actually being his real surname is a pure fluke, @nothingtoseehereatall? (Not a New Yorker fan, I will admit, rigour or no rigour.)

@WynkenDeWorde, yes, that scene is infuriating. The three women are depicted as being like eight-year-olds asked to recite a poem at assembly, shuffling, giggling and nudging, rather than staff in a tourist office.

There's also the 'smart, elderly' women in Port Isaac who appear to think Simon Armitage is akin to the TV character Doc Martin and say 'Ooh' a lot.

And the couple at the stile who appear to share the mass delusion that SA is undercover and refusing to reveal his identity, are also a 'smart, elderly' couple, despite being presented as total idiots, who 'coo' over TW going through a stile, take photographs of this amazing sight, and apparently are off to blog about their exciting encounter with SA for their book club... (And yet, none of the many people who are on fire to blog about their encounter with SA appear to have ever done so.)

SA himself, in his two books about his walks, doesn't (from memory) describe a single person as shuffling or giggling at encountering him, far less hordes of elderly women behaving like deranged fangirls...

I mean, the vast majority of people don't read contemporary poetry, and wouldn't recognise the name, far less get all starstruck! Is SW really so naive that she's under the impression SA is a household name?

@FishwivesSalute @WynkenDeWorde

The ageism certainly seems to be a recurrent theme amongst the other misanthropies.

If she is to be believed, SA was some sort of literary equivalent of the young Brad Pitt, which is just nonsense. I actually think the young Brad Pitt could have gone unnoticed on the SWCP with minimal effort.

SA himself, in his two books about his walks, doesn't (from memory) describe a single person as shuffling or giggling at encountering him, far less hordes of elderly women behaving like deranged fangirls...

I've read both quite recently and can confirm that he certainly doesn't. I could imagine him being quite nonplussed if faced with such displays but the shining eyed Salray seems to think it marvellous when directed at Mothtim. If you consider that at least 99% of the "mistaken identity" thing is complete fiction (I do) it is even odder to present it in such an overegged way.

An intoxicating spell has been cast of lightly salted fudge, pirate cider and the froth of righteous indignation. We are all doomed.

@FishwivesSalute It's still interesting, though, that this never once appears to have come up in relation to UK press releases, where, one assumes, 'Moth' was just called Moth, with no surname given, especially as TW seems to have leaned in to the assumption that both their surnames were Winn, if he ran the London Marathon as 'Moth Winn'.
@nothingtoseehereatall (I've written for many US publications and can absolutely see how this would simply be a misreading/ mistake, I don't think there's anything deep here).

I thought it was worth pointing out. Laurie Hertzel is a respected book critic - her LL appraisal was for the Washington Post. She has obviously read the books and likes them. She is also a published memoirist, herself.

I also don't see it as a "his real name is Ray" situation. It is not a mistake - he is called Walker!

The fact that this was published in the US six years ago, and then again four years ago - and quoted by the librarians in Maine (who also cared deeply about Moth) - is interesting.

For any pre, during and post menopausal witches (wizards also welcome), Sally Wainwright's Riot Women begins on BBC1 this Sunday the 12th at 9pm and will also be on iPlayer.

And you thought The Clash were angry. Sweary trailer here. No sign of Dr Sal.

Riot Women - Trailer: Series 1 - BBC iPlayer

I also find it noteworthy that at no time does he apparently correct them. A simple 'I'm not SA, my name is Tim Walker, you've got the wrong man,' would have done it (if any of this fantasy had really taken place at all). It would have shown them in a far better light if they'd corrected 'all the people' who had (apparently) thought he was SA, rather than taking them for all he could get.

How long is a piece of thread?
Or 18 pieces of thread.
I'm happy to be entangled for now!

No, it’s not a mistake, of course, but how did Laurie Hertzel know his real surname?

We don't know. I guessed that it was when the Walkers' daughter's photo (of Sally) was used for the 2021 article, and attributed to her. We then saw the TSP 2019 review, had already used Walker for Moth - without a photo by Alice Walker.

Laurie Hertzel describes receiving an email from Pegasus (US publishers for 3rd book) - when they were about to publish LL - presumably hoping she would also review that. It is possible there is extra information, at that stage, but we do not have a review by any other US-based book critic mentioning Moth, back then.

"Welcome to the Hotel Scammyfornia...you can check out anytime you like...but you can never leave..."

😂

ETA I don't actually want to and an 18 thread (so far) saga) about a very specific topic is an achievementment!