Chris writes: "Unless his next play is a big hit -- this controversy just might be how Thomas McCormack will be most remembered on the internet."
It's true that we are frequently remembered (by the public) for some relatively small event in our lives, and it's very hard to predict what it will be. Often, if a person has never otherwise made the news, they're remembered solely for some connection with another far more famous figue -- or the person's pathetic fame may come from, say, the sensational way he dies. Eventually, to all intents and purposes most of us will be forgotten entirely. If you Google or Wikipedia my name now, it'll appear on the first page. In a generation, I may be on the thousandth page. After my two children graduated from my old alma mater, Brown U., I gave some money to the university to build a little theater on campus and name it after our family. I can imagine some time in the future when a student may ponder that name and wonder who the hell they were. Even now in those Google entries, my connection with David Irving doesn't appear in any of the early pages. The David Irving Wikipedia entry, though it's approximately as long as Abraham Lincoln's entry(!), doesn't have my name (it does have St. Martin's). After I die, I'd be willing to -- so to speak -- "live with" being known as the guy who killed Irving's book. You caught me by citing my vague "tone and insinuations" reason. In fact there were quite specific justifications, but detailed long-term memory of autobiographical info is not my strong suit, so I couldn't lay those justifications out now without rereading the book. The dominant general memory is of Irving's effectively exalting Goebbels as heroic figure, and arguing that the Jews had it coming. As for "something valuable to add to the history of that period", there were, as I recall, facts I personally didn't know and found interesting. But that can be true of any holocaust-denier's well-researched book. Nevertheless, you wouldn't publish a book that had 200 pages of condemnation of the Jews soley because it had another twenty pages of interesting historical facts. And Irving was a good researcher -- in the sense of finding stuff. (His first big book, DESRT FOX, a biography of Rommel, was deservedly a bestseller. The problem was his selection of what, from his findings, he'd publicize and what he'd suppress. There was a great brouhaha over his having been chosen to translate Goebbels' diaries. Eighty pages of original microfiches evidently disappeared after being loaned to him. What was in them? No, the editor who signed the book up was in no way anti-Semitic. But he was at one time a PhD candidate in history, and I imagine he prized the acceptable history more than he condemned the many suggestions that the Jews were an invidious presence in Hitler's Germany that deserved what befell them. (What follows here is the rest of Chris's posting.) The author in question (David Irving) is a notorious holocaust-denier --- which is a terrible thing -- whether it's a denial of what Germans did to Jews, Turks to Armenians, Japanese to Chinese, or Andrew Jackson to the Cherokee. But ... as I followed the controversy on the net .. it was never clear to me that this involved the actual book under discussion (a biography of Joseph Goebbels) If it did --- yes --- such thing should only be published by a Neo-Nazi press --- but if it didn't --- and if the book had something valuable to add to the history of that period -- then the reputation of St. Martin's Press would, I think, be called into question. Especially -- now that Cheerskep is telling us that the problem was only with the "tone and insinuations" -- rather than with invalid historical facts or unreasonable interpretations. Was the editor who approved it a Nazi sympathizer or Jew hater ? I suspect that he was quite bright and competent (if Cheerskep had put his trust in him) What did he have to say in defense of his decision? (I can understand if Cheerskep doesn't want to discuss this any more -- but he did bring it up -- and it is a fascinating subject - and quite relevant to the "reputation of publishers") ************** New year...new news. Be the first to know what is making headlines. (http://www.aol.com/?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000026)
