{"id":386,"date":"2014-07-16T18:44:57","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T01:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pixel-stained-wretch.com\/wordpress\/?p=386"},"modified":"2014-07-16T19:57:09","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T02:57:09","slug":"the-authors-big-mistake-a-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pixel-stained-wretch.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/16\/the-authors-big-mistake-a-case-study\/","title":{"rendered":"The Author\u2019s Big Mistake: A Case Study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Once upon a time, I was asked to review an interactive book. I wrote the review, <a href=\"http:\/\/tidbits.com\/article\/14696\" title=\"The review\" target=\"_blank\">posted it<\/a>, and that was that. For a few weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Then the book\u2019s author discovered my review. And he even thanked me for it. At first. <\/p>\n<p>Then, he didn&#8217;t. Within hours, he proceeded to commit, in a torrential series of responses to the review that dwarfed the review itself in sheer volume, what Paul Fussell described in his 1982 essay, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/thepmi.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/02\/fussell-1982.pdf\" title=\"The seminal essay that defined the ABM\" target=\"_blank\">The Author\u2019s Reply as Literary Genre<\/a>,\u201d: \u201cthe A.B.M. \u2014 the Author&#8217;s Big Mistake\u2014that is, the letter from an aggrieved writer complaining about a review.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It was, in a weird way, a beautiful thing to behold as the aggrieved author posted comment after comment (revising each several times [I got an email from the server each time he revised a comment]), spinning ever more wildly out of control with each submission. Some people tried to talk him down gently from the ledge, but he would have none of it. I stayed out of the fray, remembering both the wisdom of Sir John Falstaff and a poster that a friend of mine had back in the 1970s which read, \u201cNever wrestle with a pig: you\u2019ll both get dirty, and the pig <em>likes<\/em> it.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>The comment storm continued for the next week, but it eventually died down. Then, someone else found it and posted a series of screen shots, with commentary, to <a href=\"http:\/\/imgur.com\/a\/F2wBF\" title=\"The review commentary in pictures.\" target=\"_blank\">Imgur<\/a>. And that, in turn, spawned a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/cringepics\/comments\/2aevsj\/author_of_a_299_book_going_ballistic_in_the\/\" title=\"The reddit thread\" target=\"_blank\">reddit thread<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Before the author chose to \u201cprove\u201d that my review was wrong, the review had gone largely unnoticed, but once the author engaged, hilarity and mockery ensued. And the attention that the author\u2019s rebuttals attracted, and the scorn that was subsequently heaped upon him, is why Fussell calls such responses the Author\u2019s Big Mistake\u2014and Fussell didn\u2019t even have the Internet to provide him with examples!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Once upon a time, I was asked to review an interactive book. I wrote the review, posted it, and that was that. For a few weeks. Then the book\u2019s author discovered my review. And he even thanked me for it. At first. Then, he didn&#8217;t. Within hours, he proceeded to commit, in a torrential series &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pixel-stained-wretch.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/16\/the-authors-big-mistake-a-case-study\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Author\u2019s Big Mistake: A Case Study&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor-2","category-publications"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Author\u2019s Big Mistake: A Case Study - Worlds of Wanwood Leafmeal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pixel-stained-wretch.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/16\/the-authors-big-mistake-a-case-study\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Author\u2019s Big Mistake: A Case Study - Worlds of Wanwood Leafmeal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Once upon a time, I was asked to review an interactive book. I wrote the review, posted it, and that was that. For a few weeks. Then the book\u2019s author discovered my review. And he even thanked me for it. At first. Then, he didn&#8217;t. 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