Hi Karen -- (1) I'm astonished by the breadth of your interests and knowledge; (2) I read your last letter on publishing and couldn't agree more. Particularly re the lackadaisical pace, inept editing, and lack of sales support of even the most prestigious publishers (unless the author is a past President or has won the Booker). (3) Back when I practiced law, I was mostly in civil litigation, where documents are always more important than witnesses. But all the criminal classes studied Elizabeth Loftus's work on the unreliability of witnesses, and learned to tear witnesses apart. Detectives love eye witnesses, but they are most successfully used against those too poor to hire effective counsel. I'll be moving to California in the near-future as my work with the Bullitt Foundation slowly tapers off. I'm not absolutely sure how I got to be on your mailing list, but I enjoy your very candid writing and would like to exchange my Bullitt email address (which will end) for denis@denishayes.com, which will probably survive as long as I do. Oh, and for what it's worth, I agree with your "but truth matters." It's hard to me to conceive that Brian Williams (whom I liked better than most news readers) simply misremembered having been shot at. As one commenter noted, it was like having watched the Twin Towers collapse on television and then telling people you were on the 50th floor. --Denis--
Denis, I will change your email and am always so glad to hear from you. (One day I hope to meet in person.) That's the right point about Brian Williams, and a good measure for these created or recombined "memories." When they make the person telling the tale into a hero, or participant in an event like 9/11, that's heading awfully close to plain old lying. It's common: Valerie Eliot did it, and so did E B White's fictional Walter Mitty. I sometimes wish we had some equivalent of Catholic confession just so people would ask themselves if they'd told any lies.
Hi Karen -- (1) I'm astonished by the breadth of your interests and knowledge; (2) I read your last letter on publishing and couldn't agree more. Particularly re the lackadaisical pace, inept editing, and lack of sales support of even the most prestigious publishers (unless the author is a past President or has won the Booker). (3) Back when I practiced law, I was mostly in civil litigation, where documents are always more important than witnesses. But all the criminal classes studied Elizabeth Loftus's work on the unreliability of witnesses, and learned to tear witnesses apart. Detectives love eye witnesses, but they are most successfully used against those too poor to hire effective counsel. I'll be moving to California in the near-future as my work with the Bullitt Foundation slowly tapers off. I'm not absolutely sure how I got to be on your mailing list, but I enjoy your very candid writing and would like to exchange my Bullitt email address (which will end) for denis@denishayes.com, which will probably survive as long as I do. Oh, and for what it's worth, I agree with your "but truth matters." It's hard to me to conceive that Brian Williams (whom I liked better than most news readers) simply misremembered having been shot at. As one commenter noted, it was like having watched the Twin Towers collapse on television and then telling people you were on the 50th floor. --Denis--
Denis, I will change your email and am always so glad to hear from you. (One day I hope to meet in person.) That's the right point about Brian Williams, and a good measure for these created or recombined "memories." When they make the person telling the tale into a hero, or participant in an event like 9/11, that's heading awfully close to plain old lying. It's common: Valerie Eliot did it, and so did E B White's fictional Walter Mitty. I sometimes wish we had some equivalent of Catholic confession just so people would ask themselves if they'd told any lies.