Have you ever read something and realized, from a minor detail, that the author probably isn’t from the place they’re writing about?
I’m reading a book right now called ** The Prayer of the Bone** by Paul Byers, which is set in Maine. It’s not the world’s best book, but it’s ok other than the author pouring on the concept that being up north is really living " in the wilderness." That’s not so bad, though, since a lot of books placed in New England seem to harbor the same misconceptions.
What is odd is that one of the characters, a native born Mainer, was thinking about something he and another local boy did - cook bacon and grits over an open flame. Grits?? Now, had there been something to indicate that it was something novel for them having done I could have swallowed that but no, it’s given in a ho hum they did this all time sort of manner. Like many northerners, I only have a vague idea of what grits are. There are some specialty stores I could probably special order a box of grits from (They come in boxes, like they said in My Cousin Vinnie right?) but it’s not something I could run down to the grocery store and pick up. Since Maine has the same chains of grocery stores as NH, and from what I can tell they all sell the same items (admittedly, I rarely go north of Portland, but I’m sure places more north are similar) it would be odd for anyone to be cooking grits up here, open flames or no.
Sure enough, I checked the book jacket, the author is from London.
What little things like that in books you read made you realize the author wasn’t from where they were writing from?
I read the book “Downers Grove” by Michael Hornburg and he was pretty good for the most part, but made a mistake here or there. Like the characters were driving down 63rd street and they “exited off” onto another street. Exited off 63rd? It’s just a street. Dunkin’ Donuts is there. You just turn.
Overall, I was impressed with the detail, though - he did some research. It was also really fun reading a book that takes place where I live and talks in detail about various locations here.
I was flipping through a mystery novel that takes place in Washington. I don’t know whether it was true ignorance, an editing error, or bad research, but the author apparently didn’t know the difference between Renton (where Jimi Hendrix is buried) and Redmond (30 minutes north of Renton, where Microsoft is headquartered).
Hey, there’s more in Renton than Jimi Hendrix’s body. (Sorry, I’m still a little annoyed from the time we went to my great-aunt’s grave, about 100 ft. from Hendrix’s, and somebody told us, “hey, you missed it, man, he’s right over there.” Okay, thanks.)
I haven’t read the book, but I remember a review of a Tom Wolfe book set in the SF Bay Area. The book was set in the late '80s I think, and at one point someone is released from Santa Rita ( a jail near Dublin) and proceeds to take BART (regional train service). Except that the extension to Dublin wasn’t completed until several years ago.
True. It surprised me. I’m going to college in PA, but I’m from NM, and I picked up eating grits from my formerly Southern parents, especially my mother. As far as I know, I’m the only person on campus who:
For the most part I enjoy Dean Koontz’s books. But it’s obvious he’s never worked a day in his life as anything but a writer. Nothing totally ignorant like, the welder, being a manly man, escued the use of a hood and just squinted his eyes as he went to work, but just like he’s never done it, never seen it, and doesn’t understand it.
Also, it’s obvious that other than a trip or ten to a ski slope he’s never been cold in his life. After 20 years living in Wyoming I know you don’t drop dead after 3 minutes exposure to 10 degree weather, no matter how hard the wind is blowing.
Actually a common error for those not for around Seattle. People here the names and assume they’re the same. I only know the difference from Shadowrun.
I haven’t read the books myself, but I was told that Debbie Macomber’s Dakota series have similar errors, like the character driving on the freeway and it becomes a two-lane highway an hour west out of Grand Forks.
The freeway runs north-south, and it doesn’t become a two-lane highway at any point.
The four-lane highway that runs east-west also does not become two-lane at any point, not even near Lakota, which is about an hour west of Grand Forks.
I guess her driver missed that on their research trip.
Meg Wolitzer’s Sleepwalking describes the library at Swarthmore College, noting the lights on timers. Ther may have been some other feature, like “cold” or “dark” or “echoing” or “uncarpeted.” This describes the library at Brown University, where Wolitzer went, perfectly. However, Swarthmore’s library is well-lit, has no timers, and has plushy red (last I checked) carpeting throughout.
I was not suggesting that it’s impossible to eat grits in the north east, since I’m sure that people with ties to the south do so, but that it’s not typical behavior for the natives of states in the extreme north east. It was presented in a manner that suggests that it’s a standard food staple up here, and it isn’t. I’m sure there are southerners who make frappes, but that’d hardly be typical either, I suspect.
Several years ago I was browsing through the Local Interest section of a bookstore and saw a book that claimed to be an “Historical Novel” about Andrew Jackson’s defeat of the Creek Indian Nation at the battle of Horseshoe Bend in Alabama.
Since this battle site, which is now a National Park, is about ten miles from my house, I bought the book and opened it with some anticipation.
On page one, the author placed “Horseshoe Bend” on the Tombigbee River, which is about 80 miles west of the actual battle site. Within three pages I found several other errors that indicated that the author had not only never visited the site, he hadn’t even bothered to look at a map!
I tried to go ahead and read the book for the “novel” part, but the inaccuracies ruined it for me, and I gave up before the end of the first chapter. I traded it in at a used book swap store.
You’d think that if someone was going to go to all the trouble to write a novel, they would at least get the basics correct.
In The Stand, King also called the University of Louisville the University of Kentucky at Louisville, which is funny.
I think King did spend some time in Colorado–I think for several months, staying at a hotel. IIRC, the experience formed the basis for The Shining. I’ve lived in Denver for a few months now, and it’s interesting to go back to The Stand and re-read his descriptions of Boulder. Even taking into account a 20 year difference between when he wrote the story and when I saw the city, I don’t think he captured it very well at all.
Writers who are not from the South invariably get the southern accents wrong. They also misuse “y’all”.
Writers who are not from Texas invariably get the Texan accent wrong. They also misuse “y’all,” but that’s more understandable, as non-Southern Texans often fail to use it correctly themselves.
Writers who are neither from the South nor from Texas invariably fail to notice that they have two different accents.
