Slog Tipper/Twitter user* Martin wanted to make sure everyone saw this Salon story by Patrick Somerville, an author whose book was totally misread by reviewer Janet Maslin in the New York Times. It's a really interesting story:

I realized that Janet Maslin, who is not only one of the most accomplished critics in the world, but who is also the person who lifted my first novel, “The Cradle,” out of obscurity with a rave review three years before, had made a simple reading error within the first five pages of my novel.

She‘d mixed up two characters.

It was really important to not mix up those characters.

And she never realized it.

And by the end of the book, there was no ambiguity.

Unfortunately, the piece doesn't stay as interesting all the way through—the New York Times editor assigned to the correction and Somerville correspond via e-mail, with Somerville writing from the point of view of his novel's protagonist, which is altogether too cute. But it's still a real-life revenge story, and those are always interesting on some level. (Every author who gets a negative review thinks the reviewer misread their novel; Somerville just happens to have proof.) I do think that Somerville is overstating the importance of negative reviews, though. Any review is a net positive for a book because it gets the word out to a wider audience, and readers of reviews don't keep score as fastidiously as reviewers and authors might believe. In many ways—and I'm saying this as a book critic, so I'm aware of how it sounds—the content of the review doesn't matter, it's the fact that there is a review that matters.

* Slog Twipper?