Horsin’ Around
Don Coldsmith, Syndicated Columnist
Originally published 01:20 p.m., June 16, 2008
Updated 01:20 p.m., June 16, 2008
Any writer makes some errors. It is only to be hoped that they aren’t big ones. There are inside jokes among writers about the time somebody who should have known better simply got careless.
One well known western writer (no, not L’Amour) once had his hero crouch behind a rock and quietly slip the safety off his revolver. (Hint: a revolver has no safety latch, but uses the half-cock position as a safe). That’s the sort of thing that’s a constant hazard and will have the writer’s colleagues and friends joking about it for years.
This sort of error is in addition to the familiar “typos” and printing errors. In the production of a book, there are at least a half dozen people besides the author who read and edit. Editors, copy editors, proof readers — and the author sees it at least twice more after he finishes it, once as edited manuscript, again as proof galley.
Imagine my surprise, then, when one of my students called attention to a printing error in the very first paperback of the Spanish Bit series. A silly thing. The text is referring to the daughter of one of the main characters. A one-letter mistake, substituting an “l” for a “d.” Daughter becomes “laughter,” which makes no sense at all. But here’s the odd thing: That book was in the 11th printing and nobody seemed to have noticed. The word is so obviously supposed to be “daughter” that the reader (as well as the author, editor, copy editors, proof readers, etc.) all read it as it should be, not as it is.
My biggest real mistake, which I’ve mentioned before, was probably in about my fifth book. I described in detail the butchering of a deer, including the careful removal of the gallbladder. It was several years before a veterinarian reader contacted me about the fact that a deer does not have a gallbladder. I always thought everything had a gallbladder! With the help of a friend who is a biologist (but didn’t know either, at first), I finally learned that there are a few mammals that do not. Deer, cats, horses and “sometimes giraffes,” the textbook said. This is crazy, I thought. All of these have close relatives with gallbladders — and on a giraffe, it’s optional equipment?
Well, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the story, telling it as a part of one of my lectures on the Kansas Humanities Council circuit.
Recently, I received a note from another veterinarian, who had heard that lecture. He had just learned, he said, that there’s another class of mammals without gallbladders, the “camelidae.” With people raising exotic pets like llamas, vicunas, guanacos and alpacas, this becomes important. At least to veterinarians, I guess. I doubt that any of my characters will attempt to butcher a llama, though.
Another friend saved me from a mistake equally bad. In the book “Thunderstick,” I had a scene where the character took cloth patches out of the brass-covered compartment in the stock of his musket. It’s called the patchbox. My editor happened to send a copy of the unedited proof galleys to one of the Kansas Muzzleloaders. That was fortunate, because there was an error. One that would not be noticed except by one reader in a thousand, but I’d worry about that one. If an author doesn’t strive for accuracy, he (or she) loses credibility. Readers who are informed will snicker about his ignorance.
Even admitting that there are glaring errors made by Pulitzer winners like James Michener, I’d be embarrassed in my muzzleloader friend hadn’t caught this one. He phoned me to point out that in the time frame of the book, this would have to be a French musket, which would not have a patchbox. Anyway, we did catch it in time, I think —
See you down the road.
Author and columnist Don Coldsmith lives in Emporia.