Pulitzer prize-winning author Philip Roth has written an open letter to Wikipedia after the online encyclopaedia refused to accept him as a credible source for information about his own novel, The Human Stain.
Published in 2000, the book tells the the story of professor Coleman Silk who loses his job following accusations of racism. The book had been described on Wikipedia as being "allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard."
Roth has insisted that this is untrue, and that the story was inspired by Melvin Tumin, a Princeton professor who actually spoke the words used by Silk in The Human Stain about two African American students: "Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?"
In the open letter published by the New Yorker, Roth reveals that he petitioned Wikipedia to delete the "misstatement." He was subsequently told "that I, Roth, was not a credible source: `I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,' the Wikipedia Administrator wrote – 'but we require secondary sources.'"
Roth's 2,000-plus word explanation has since been taken on board and the Wkipedia entry now runs with Roth's explanation. Wikipedia credits the novel's inspiration to Tumin, and respectfully mentions Roth's open letter.
It's not the first time that Roth has attempted to correct the record. The Pulitzer-winning author earlier this year faxed the editors of The Atlantic over an essay that claimed that he suffered "a 'crack-up' in his mid-50s".
"The statement is not true nor is there reliable biographical evidence to support it," wrote Roth at the time. "After knee surgery in March 1987, when I was 54, I was prescribed the sleeping pill Halcion, a sedative hypnotic in the benzodiazepine class of medications that can induce a debilitating cluster of adverse effects … My own adverse reaction to Halcion … started when I began taking the drug and resolved promptly when, with the helpful intervention of my family doctor, I stopped."
All will be elaborated in detail in a future biography of Philip Roth, which author Ross Miller reckons will take him anywhere between eight and ten years to complete.
