The MYB episode
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Epilogue
25.06.07
There is an epilogue to the story.
Me: So how did my letter sound? Was it too mean?
Zichun: No lah... It sounded...
Me: Nose-in-air? Pompous? Impractical? Overly idealistic?
Zichun: No... Just... OCD.
Phew.
Anyway, Zichun decided to test his friend who is supposedly a very good literature student who did Lit "S" at A level.
Z: When you hear the name "Shelley", which author comes to mind?
Lit "S" Friend: Mary Shelley lor.
Z: Really? Just Mary Shelley?
Lit "S" Friend: Is there supposed to be someone else?
Z: What about Percy Shelley*?
Lit "S" Friend: ......
Z: Have you heard of "Shelley and Byron"?
Lit "S" Friend: Oh yah hor... Sounds a bit familiar...
*One of the most pivotal poets who ever lived, without whom the poetry of the entire 19th and 20th centuries would not exist as we know it today
All I can say is,
O_O
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The MYB saga continues
20.06.07
I was AMAZED to receive this reply today! From my experience, writing to newspapers is always like writing into a black hole. Haha, this is actually the first time I've seen a flicker of humanity from the fourth estate and this completely changes my attitude to the MYB journalists. I love them now.
* * *
Hello Joanna,
I'm sorry you felt that your words were misrepresented.
Everyone here was so charmed by your letter and every effort was made to keep its original voice and spirit intact and to only chop it down to fit the space we had.
Had there been no space constraints, I doubt the copy editor would have truncated your letter. You are right, it is rare that we get such heartfelt e-mails from poetry-loving purists.
I do apologise for any embarrassment caused to you because of the addition of Mary to Shelley.
Given the time constraints, we cannot actually inform people before their letters are published. Again, if this has caused you any problems I'm sorry.
I'm an avid lover of literature myself and I think it was so nice of you to write in with the advice you did.
But as you know, a good deed never seems to go unpunished--and I can sympathise with your feelings about having your letter altered.
My editor is on leave at the moment but I can discuss with her as to how we can repair this and get back to you next week.
Best regards,
Shefali
* * *
My reply
Dear S Shefali,
Thanks for taking the trouble to write your very caring reply. I'm amazed by such an understanding and tolerant response to my email as I was fully expecting everyone to be irritated by my last rather obsessive-compulsive mail (which my friends told me was a neurotic nitpicking thing to do)!
Please do not feel compelled to expend any further effort on any "repairs", as I am really not as aggrieved as I might have sounded about the error. I did not even expect an apology, and I am really amazed and touched that you have offered me one in spite of a busy schedule and the time constraints that plague journalists. That is more than enough! It was perfectionism and love for Shelley, rather than true annoyance, that prompted me to write in my second email, and I too apologise for perhaps having caused needless alarm.
I have always enjoyed reading Mind Your Body. Besides the great work that you have all been doing at engaging the public with your interesting coverage of health issues both familiar and new, it's nice to know that among the writers the cause of literature is not entirely neglected! Do keep up the good work, and once again, I thank you for your reply.
Regards,
Joanna
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18.06.07
For your amusement, dear friends
Dear Mind Your Body,
A letter of mine that I wrote on May 24 was published in Mind Your Body on June 13 2007 in the 'mailbag' section as "School can make one become a better writer". I would like to point out an error which was introduced into the text in the process of editing. It may appear to be a minor error, but it is rather embarrassing.
In my original email, I had included the phrase "....the authors and poets whom I loved like Hugo, Dostoyevsky, TH White, Robert Graves, Shelley and Byron". This was amended with the addition of some names to read "the authors and poets whom I loved - such as Victor Hugo, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T. H. White, Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Lord Byron".
The error is that the name "Shelley", when written on its own in this context, does not refer to Mary Shelley, but to her more famous husband Percy Bysshe Shelley - the author of great works of literature such as 'Prometheus Unbound' and 'Julian and Maddalo'. One of his most famous poems is 'Ozymandias' (which was mentioned by SM Lee Kuan Yew in a newspaper interview a few years ago). Mary Shelley did not contribute much to literature, and is most well-known for 'Frankenstein', a gothic horror novel which she wrote at the age of 19.
Percy Bysshe Shelley is however one of the greatest and most influential poets who ever lived, a contemporary of Byron and Keats. His large body of work spans about 10 years. Many poets who lived after him would not have become what they were had he not existed. CS Lewis said of him, "If anyone who has read 'Prometheus Unbound' still supposes that ... Shelley is any other than a very great poet, I cannot help him". Yeats wrote of him, "When in middle life I looked back I found that he and not Blake, whom I had studied more and with more approval, had shaped my life." His poetry, and the intense manner in which he lived and died, is seen as expressive of the Romantic movement and the universal role of the poet in relation to society. In fact, he has become himself a poetic icon, and is mentioned in the poetry of authors such as TS Eliot, WH Auden and Geoffrey Hill.
In my original email, I had not thought that it was necessary to specify the first name of each author, since they are great authors whose surname would suffice. Shelley's name, especially in this context when it is placed in conjunction with Byron's, should have been sufficient identification for a reader whose interest was in this area to know that I was referring to Percy Bysshe Shelley. To a reader whose interest was not in this area, it would have been unnecessary to add a first name anyway.
However, by adding the word "Mary" to my original email, the sense of the email is distorted, as that is not the author to whom I was referring. Indeed, the name "Mary Shelley" is rather out of place here, and detracts from the point that I was making in that sentence, which was that I was reading authors whom my teachers themselves did not seem to understand, which I named in order that the girl for whom this letter was originally written might be able to identify with what I was saying. I do not think that an admirer of "Mary Shelley" would be very accessible to a 13-year-old lover of writing, whereas an admirer of "Percy Shelley" or just "Shelley" would.
Apart from the factual error, it is also rather embarrassing for me to have been quoted as ranking "Mary Shelley" among my favourite authors in a paper with such a wide circulation as it makes that whole sentence ring false to those in the know. I know that most of the readers of Mind Your Body will not notice the error, but my fear is that those few readers who are familiar with the authors whom I listed will have furrowed their brows at the inclusion of "Mary Shelley" among the names and will have thought that I was faking the whole sentence and just throwing famous names out at random without having actually read them. If I were indeed as serious a reader as I claimed to be I would be very unlikely to list "Mary Shelley" among the authors whom I most respected!
I am aware that this would be a very small matter to most people, but I feel quite uncomfortable with it, especially as I was not aware that this email was going to be published, as I had originally written it simply as a personal response to the article which it referred to in the hope that it could be forwarded to the original letter-writers. I now know, thanks to a disclaimer next to my printed letter, that "when you write to Mind Your Body, we take it that you agree at no charge to allow us to archive, resell or reproduce the letter in any way and in any medium". However, this disclaimer was not present on the page of the original article which I responded to and I was not aware that my email could be published.
Even then, I would not have minded that the email was published, and I do not mind the fact that it was edited as I fully understand the need to edit articles, if not for the fact that the misleading word "Mary" was added to my article. While I know that it is standard journalistic practice to chop and rephrase and publish without informing the writers before publication, I feel it is to some extent an invasion of privacy if a letter which I wrote were to have words added to it and then published in my name, especially when those words alter the content of the article.
Once again, I must say that I am aware that it is not a major error at all, especially in the context of running a newspaper on medical issues! However, my experience with writing has made me value exactitude - after all, as Francis Bacon wrote, "reading maketh a full man, writing an EXACT man, and conference a ready man". I believe that even in a newspaper which deals with scientific and medical issues, journalists ought to take care with all the facts which appear in the newspaper, even with those rare facts relating to literature, and not take short-cuts and end up making mistakes (a Google search would have easily informed you of the error of concluding that "Shelley" was a reference to "Mary Shelley").
In conclusion, I feel that it is my duty as the email-writer to inform you of this error, and my duty as a poetry-lover to introduce you to Shelley, even if it may not be within my rights as a member of the public to make a fuss about having been 'misquoted' in an article in a way which was truly rather embarrassing to myself.
Thank you for entertaining this ramble, and I hope it has provided some amusement. I guess you don't get poetry-loving purists writing to you every day.
Regards,
Joanna Chan
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Mind Your Language!
14.06.07
It was brought to my attention yesterday that an email I'd written to Mind Your Body a few days before my Family Medicine exam (yes, yes, I use every means available to procrastinate studying for exams) WAS PUBLISHED in yesterday's Mind Your Body.
After recovering from the initial trauma of seeing it in print, unimaginatively chopped and mutilated as these things always are (I had not written it with intent to be published - it had been a longer and more personal email which I hoped that Mind Your Body could forward to the girl's parents who had written a letter to Mind Your Body recently, and if I'd known they were going to use it for publication I'd have tightened up my language so that they wouldn't have to chop), I decided to forgive the editor, whom I came to see had actually done a pretty good job of editing....
EXCEPT for ONE THING... one cringe-worthy thing...
The editor had gei kiang ADDED two words to my article... Two words which would not have mattered if one of them had been a different word....
I had mentioned that two of the poets whom I loved to read were Shelley and Byron. The editor added the word "Lord" in front of Byron.... and "Mary" in front of Shelley.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I cry out in pain.
Now I am misrepresented to the whole of Singapore.
Sigh.
Why "Mary"? Why "Mary"? Why "Mary"?
I know lah I am being very jing jing ji jiao (nit-picking) but I mean, if I'd said I liked to read Browning and Tennyson (which I don't, at least not Browning - I haven't broken into Browning yet), and they'd added the words "Elizabeth Barrett" and "Lord" as well, nothing would really have been amiss because Elizabeth Barrett Browning WAS as great a poet as her husband.
But to put "Mary", when I wrote only Shelley...
Mary Shelley was not known for anything except Frankenstein! And while I did read that book while I was in my Romantics phase... HOW could they imply that I read the wife and not the husband?
That the poet whom I hero-worshipped was any other than the author of Prometheus Unbound and Julian and Maddalo?
Alright, I thought to myself. Maybe these literature philistines at Mind Your Body just felt that they HAD to add a first name (as if the magnificent words "Shelley" and "Byron" would not speak for themselves)! So maybe they don't know who Shelley was. I can forgive them since they're not required to know such things. Maybe they googled it, and the first thing they saw under "Shelley" was Mary Shelley. It's possible. Frankenstein is a popular work.
But when I google "Shelley", what comes out is, and naturally so, PERCY Shelley! PERCY Shelley! PB Shelley! Shelley, the person who comes to mind when the word Shelley is used! THE Shelley in the phrase "Shelley and Byron"! Of whom CS Lewis said, ""If anyone who has read Prometheus Unbound still supposes that ... Shelley is any other than a very great poet, I cannot help him." Of whom Yeats said, "When in middle life I looked back I found that he and not Blake, whom I had studied more and with more approval, had shaped my life..."
Bother!!!
Heh, I have nothing against Mary Shelley of course. I just don't like the fact that all of Singapore gets to read that I consider "Mary" Shelley a great poet... when she wasn't even a poet and in fact has no literary claims to fame besides a horror story she wrote at the age of 19...
Bother, bother, bother.
Never mind.. it's just my pride talking... I should care less about what people think of me. Yes, I know that 99% of people won't even notice that error.
But the people who know - the fellow Shelley lovers - will notice, and that's the worst part.
Why does no one care about exactitude anymore?
Heh. And I just can't help thinking that it was just so EXTRA. Why did they need to add ANYTHING to the words "Shelley" and "Byron"? They are great enough to be referred to by their surnames alone. They are the only Shelley and Byron who need no qualification by first name. If you just say "Byron" people will know you're talking of Lord Byron. If you just say "Shelley" people will know you're talking of SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE.
Except, obviously, the editors of Mind Your Body.
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Sigh... Haiyah. I do think that - considering they didn't even tell me they were going to publish - they might have refrained from adding anything. Or at least they might have told me they were publishing. Instead, you don't even know they're going to publish something that's not even correct about you heh. It's in a sense an invasion of privacy.. somehow I don't feel safe in the thought that people can add anything to your words. Take away, I understand. But add to them and pass them off as yours?
This incident may have produced more humour than harm but it has nevertheless left me a bit shaken. If the press cannot be trusted with so little, can it be trusted with much? If it sees fit to alter such small inconsequential details - which, in their own way, are gross errors - then how do we know that there is not much more distortion going on of the facts that really matter - that do not just concern one girl's personal pride and artistic reputation, but far bigger issues concerning the whole nation?
No wonder Camille had his own newspaper.
