An Open Letter to Wikipedia About Anatole Broyard and "The Human Stain" : The New Yorker

An Open Letter to Wikipedia About Anatole Broyard and "The Human Stain" : The New Yorker: "POSTED BY PHILIP ROTH


Dear Wikipedia,

I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.

Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”"

It gets better. Wikipedia is yet another example of the current anti-elitism, democratic-knowledge movement, which when it reaches and influences heart surgery, I'm running for the hills.

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Probably most writers have experienced this to a degree. My greatest example was in 1984, trying to convince folks that my hit play Christmas at the Juniper Tavern was not about the Rajneesh. I even had a 1975 one-act that introduced a prototype of the swami character, long before the Rajneesh became an issue in Oregon. No matter. Nobody believed me. They loved the play -- but for what I considered the wrong reasons. A good lesson.

Fortunately Bob Hicks let me set the record straight in his 25-year anniversary appreciation of the play.