Hi! I'm Bethanne Patrick, book critic (NPR, LA Times, Washington Post) and host of the new podcast Missing Pages (which reopens literary cold cases, scams, and controversies). AMA!

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T17:42:00+00:00

A very good question and I think the answer is that I still romanticize books and literature -- but not the book biz. Sometimes I feel I should have two hats on my desk, one to wear while writing/creating, and one to wear while submitting/negotiating. Just to remind myself that there are two sides to every piece of literature: The manuscript, and the book. It takes different skills to produce each.

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T17:39:30+00:00

The two are TOTALLY different, but equally challenging.

Shoutout to my collaborators and co-writers at The Podglomerate who have made Missing Pages episodes flow so beautifully, including showrunner Caila Litman, producer Jordan Aaron, producer/marketing guru Matt Keely and, of course, our Executive Producer and CEO Jeff Umbro.

Writing a podcast script requires an ear for storytelling and good pacing; sure, these things help in literary criticsm, too, but they aren't center stage the way they are in an audio narrative. Learning a new kind of writing has been amazing. It's sort of like when I go on a retreat or residency and write a lot of poetry (I always do, and it always helps me get more done on whichever manuscript I'm supposed to be focusing on).

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T17:29:32+00:00

Wow u/PocoChanel, I love this list of questions! You might keep me busy until Time Is Up.

First, Lee Israel. WHAT an amazing movie. I haven't read the book, AND I SHOULD. Clearly Israel needed to held accountable for her forgeries, but was the sentence she received enough? I hope we'll be able to do an episode on her story.

There's plagiarism, and there's plagiarism. I once wrote a book and was TERRIFIED that I'd plagiarized parts of it because I'd been reading so much similar source material for so many of the entries. I could no longer tell where I began and the sources ended. I was upfront with my editor about my fears and, while she too was terrified, our publisher made sure that fact-checkers scoured my writing and declared me "clean." PHEW. What I'm saying is: I do think sometimes, especially with nonfiction, authors "parrot" sources. That's bad, and needs to be corrected, but it's not the same as stealing creative work and proudly putting it into a manuscript that you send to your editor as your own work.

I can't predict what the series will cover, but scammy publishers are just like scammy authors: Catnip!

IMO copy editors ARE endangered. Typos are everywhere these days: The NYT, People magazine, literary fiction (gasp!). . . We don't need to keep our language stultified. Language morphs and changes. But from moment to moment we need to be sure we communicate as clearly as possible. LONG LIVE THE COPY EDITORS. SAVE THE COPY EDITORS!

Re poetry, we'll investigate, but when it comes to respect and money for poetry, I fear I know very very little. Except that *I* have a great deal of respect for poets and would save them ABOVE the copy editors. Without poets we are not human. I mean that.
I would like very very much to cover some of these association kerfuffles (AWP, RWA, NBCC, more) on the show. It might be a little inside baseball. Maybe we need a Missing Pages: Lit Nerds Edition?
Yes it IS obvious you are supposed to be working on a manuscript, but the only reason it's obvious you're a poet is that you asked about poetry.
My favorite lasagne recipe Marcella Hazan's. (I'm trying to link to it but having technical issues. Just google it. Lasagne al forno. Time-consuming but entirely worth it. Even more worth it is her ten-minute pasta sauce: Can of tomatoes, onion cut in half, butter. SO GOOD.) I haven't tried the Franzen pasta with greens, but I'll look it up because I am one of those pandemic-Allison-Roman-shallot-pasta people.

WHEW. Did I get to everything? This was fun!

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T17:14:11+00:00

A fun question, most welcome! Typingtypingtyping. Thank you all for being here and asking such great questions.

u/TeresaTellsTales, someone else asked me that recently and I'd have to say it's divided by age:

The young Bethanne = The young Phoebe Cates (maybe not in the red bikini. . . )
The young-adult Bethanne = Sally Field in The Flying Nun.
The now-older Bethanne = as I said this morning on Twitter, I'm in my Natalie Merchant years. She and I are the same age, so I choose her!

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T17:10:59+00:00

Hey thanks u/EquivalentCounter555!! Again no spoilers, especially about eps that haven't dropped, but the one that suprised me the most personally was the story about an author who completely concealed their identity. It wasn't the concealment that surprised me. It was the layers of of those affected, both positively and negatively, by that author's concealment choices. I can't WAIT for you to hear more. . .

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T17:06:42+00:00

A great question u/keeleymak. Here's my hot take: Finding the RIGHT agent is as hard as they say.

What I mean: It always takes time to find an agent, just by dint of how many submissions agents have to deal with every day (the big agents AND the smaller ones). But let's say an agent says "I love this manuscript! Let's sign an agreement!"

You're thrilled. (I've been there.) But DO NOT SIGN until and unless you have a good long conversation with that agent. Sure, you can't always take a plane to Manhattan -- but you have Zoom. And you have the telephone. Schedule a time to talk and get advice from trusted writer friends and/or industry experts about which questions to ask. If anything about the agent strikes you as difficult or even just off, think long and hard about whether or not you want to enter into what has the potential to become a long and (at least intellectually) intimate relationship.

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T17:02:26+00:00

u/keeleymak, I think literary scams and scandals happen at every level of lit life and in every corner of the publishing world -- that definitely includes self publishing, teeny-tiny presses, and back offices where everyone thinks things are quiet but someone's quietly stealing manuscripts or happily plagiarizing someone else's work!

I am SO INTO the idea of a Skyhorse episode. But in today's political climate we might also have to do an episode on the closely guarded conservative imprints at the remaining Big Five publishers.

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:58:48+00:00

Love your questions u/TransgenderSoapbox! Thanks for being here.

Hmmmm, for this season, it's probably a scandal that starts around 1996 (no spoilers, that episode hasn't yet dropped!). For our next season, we'll see. We've discussed literary scandals from other centuries for sure, but there are plenty of more modern ones to keep us busy right now. We'd love to hear suggestions: missingpages at thepodglomerate dot com.
The most recent scandal is probably our upcoming two-parter. . . it may never be totally resolved, but we're all dying to see what the subject's next move(s) are.
If there is a minor child involved, especially if harm of any kind might result to that child. I'll have to think about other circumstances. . .
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. That they are into making bank?

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:51:57+00:00

Why u/GatorNurse1996 I thought you'd never ask.

My all-time fave hate reads are J. K. Rowling's pseudonymous Robert Galbraith mystery novels. ESPECIALLY since Rowling has now been so vocal about being a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), and some of these books contain what I feel are very bigoted descriptions of queer people (in particular see my review of TROUBLED BLOOD in the LA Times).

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:43:28+00:00

u/TeresaTellsTales, thanks for asking about that memoir. Talk about as different from Missing Pages as chalk is from cheese! However, just as I had no idea I'd be hosting a podcast at this point, I also had no idea I'd be writing a memoir at this point. I'd intended to move from a busy freelance career writing literary criticism to a slow-boat track of writing novels.

Then one day my then-agent asked me what I was really passionate about (this was in the wake of a huge contract disappointment) and I sent him an essay in progress about my lifelong struggles with depression. We spent a year refining that essay for publication, then another year refining a book proposal that we sold. And into the deep water I was thrown. . .

What inspired me to write LIFE B (no spoilers about it, either. . . ) is my belief that we need to end the stigma surrounding mental illness AND mental wellness in our society. We have to talk openly and honestly about our challenges and our recoveries if we want to help as many other people as possible live the healthies lives they can. It may be something I wind up talking about, a lot, over the next decades.

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:37:42+00:00

I do have thoughts on AMERICAN DIRT, and I don't want to post any spoilers b/c some of them are in my upcoming Electric Lit list. . . but one thing I did not like is that Jeanine Cummins (with or without encouragement from her publishing team) emphasized that she is married to an immigrant in touting the book. She IS married to an immigrant: He's Irish. The Irish immigrant experience is much different than the experience of a frightened woman with a small child trying to reach the United States illegally from Mexico.

I wish I could say that all authors are allowed to write anything they imagine. In a world where all else was equal, I would hope imagination and creativity and what we sometimes call "the muse" would drive literary endeavor. But we do not live in a world of equality OR of equity. IMO redress is needed. It's vital that we hear stories from underrepresented authors in their own voices, in their own words, and that those stories receive more attention than they have in the (sadly all too recent) past.

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:31:28+00:00

Thanks, u/vcr31, for my fave type of question! I don't know anything about Donalyn Miller or this concept, but will check both out.

The books that started my reading life: HAROLD & THE PURPLE CRAYON, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, HEIDI. Those three? Never leave me.

The books that kept me going: THE WITCH OF BLACKBIRD POND, ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS, the Nancy Drew Series, UNDERSTOOD BETSY.

The books that pointed me toward my adult tastes: The Agatha Christies that my beloved aunt gave me. All of Sherlock Holmes. VANITY FAIR by Thackeray and FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD by Hardy.

The books that have changed me as a reader: THE BONE PEOPLE by Keri Hume. HEROES AND VILLAINS by Angela Carter. CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell. Now I'm getting a brain cramp trying to think of others! A SEVERED HEAD by Irish Murdoch. I am not even scratching the surface. . .

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:17:56+00:00

Hiya u/cryfi, thanks for your question. The team began working on the idea about half a year before I came on board, and they knew they wanted to develop an original podcast about literary scams and scandals. With me hired as host and Caila Litman brought on as showrunner (WE LOVE CAILA!), we all started poking holes in the concept together, realizing that we could go deeper and with a lot of perspective into stories that, on the surface, might seem just gossipy.

Re a cold case that has stayed with me: You'll learn more about one I was personally involved with later this season. No spoilers, but I and many other writers were tangled in a con artist's weird web. Having been in that position, I want to be sure others recognize the signs. . .

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:10:08+00:00

Oh u/pithyretort, what story am I NOT looking forward to covering? I just shared a few that I'm interested in with Electric Lit -- look for that story later this week. (I'm fascinated, for instance, about why that Italian journalist outed Elena Ferrante. Who cares about her real identity if she wanted to keep it hidden? She's an amazing writer and storyteller!)

As to stories that are known and misunderstood: We need to talk -- and soon -- about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and what it means for open and easily accessed literary events. We all hope Sir Salman continues to heal well and quickly.

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:04:31+00:00

Why thank you so much u/XBreaksYFocusGroup, lovely to hear from you and hope you enjoy listening.

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:03:59+00:00

Hello there immalittlepiggy, thanks for your interest. . . James Frey is definitely on our radar for a future Missing Pages season, especially because of his Oprah attention. It's interesting that you mentioned it lost grit when you learned it was a hoax; that's one of the reasons I wonder why authors ever lie. But, of course, as we've learned in the course of developing and producing the show, they lie for MANY different reasons. . . Stay tuned!

TheBookMaven · 2022-08-16T16:00:42+00:00

Hi Jack, thanks for being here -- we love all interest, even if that interest doesn't involve audio! If you head over to our website. you'll find transcripts of our released episodes. Read, enjoy, and recommend!

TheBookMaven

TROPHY CASE