Caveat Auctor

When John Zubrzycki’s history of Indian magic was published in 2018, Michael Dirda of The Washington Post wrote a grumpy review with a scattering of admiration. Dirda’s criticism cited typos, misspellings, garbled sentences, redundancies—in other words, slovenly editing

Here’s a grudgingly admiring snippet, the annoyance aimed at the publisher, Oxford University Press:

Oxford’s delinquency is particularly annoying because Zubrzycki, an expert on South Asian history, clearly worked hard to produce what is, despite its textual irritations, a valuable and entertaining book.

Admiring:

The Indian claim to superiority ultimately rested on the legendary rope trick. At its simplest, a rope is thrown into the air and grows rigid, then a boy climbs up it and disappears. Was the illusion ever actually performed? Did it require special equipment, perhaps a rope woven around short lengths of bamboo that could be covertly socketed together? Or might the whole thing simply be the equivalent of an urban myth? Zubryzycki’s (sic)* devotes an excellent chapter to differing theories.

*Note: This reader (who prides herself on her sharp eyes) spotted an omission in Dirda’s excellent review. I’m not sure if it was there in the print edition but there it is in the web version. See the missing noun. Caveat auctor.

Grumpy:

Oxford University Press has done an immense disservice to John Zubrzycki’s fascinating “Empire of Enchantment: The Story of Indian Magic.” Apart from some print-on-demand atrocities, I’ve seldom encountered a book in which so many words have been repeated, dropped, misspelled or misused.

Grumpy:

As writers and magicians both know, details matter. One slip may be forgiven but a slipshod presentation breaks the spell.

More grudging admiration:

Ultimately, then, “Empire of Enchantment” should be regarded as quite a good book—though it could have been even better had somebody done a proper job of proofreading.

Blessings, I say, to copyeditors and all their kind.

The book was published in India with the title Jadoowallahs, Jugglers and Jinns: A Magical History of India a few months before the OUP edition. That makes me wonder if the errors that tripped up the reviewer originated in the Indian edition and just migrated wholesale into the OUP edition. Books published in India are often more striking for their interesting and original content than for their meticulous editing and production.

That said, now I really want to read the book for myself, errors and all. Alas, it’s proving hard to get. Out of stock, says my local bookstore.