Many of us know the subversive thrill of finding a mistake in the writing of an esteemed author—a fact we know and the author did not. Book reviewers naturally feel obliged to report such findings to the world at large. But there is a substantial difference between correcting a few lapses in the course of discussing larger aspects of the book and harping on occasional errors as "proof" of the author's unworthiness to write about the subject.
Anyone who has written a substantial book that draws on multiple sources and incorporates thousands of pieces of information knows that there are very likely errors of one sort or another. These may range from errors of omission (why didn't the author mention X about Y?) and small errors of fact (Z didn't live at that address; Q was born too late to take advantage of W) to confusion about well-documented historical events.
Errors can arise as a result of the author's carelessness or honest confusion. Some errors may be the result of the author's lack of expertise in areas tangential to the subject's life—a matter of failing to know what you don't know. Given the pressures inherent in publishing a contracted book, some aspects of a life inevitably will be dealt with summarily. Compounding the problem, there are no fact-checkers at trade publishing houses. A biographer writing for general readers is unlikely to engage more than superficially with scholarly literature published on the subject, which may provide hitherto unknown significant facts along with a big helping of impenetrable theoretical material.
There is an elderly biographer who has made it his business to write book reviews couched as irritable screeds about even the smallest errors and omissions. Such obsessive scrutiny would do a prosecuting attorney proud; in a book reviewer, however, it becomes the work of a crank. I couldn't help a twinge of schadenfreude when I learned that his own recent biography—as the subject's widow told me— is studded with misinformation.
It seems to me that a balanced, spite-free outlook—a realization that writers, like biographical subjects, are fallible—is the wisest tack to take when weighing the value of a book.
(c) Cathy Curtis 2024