I was struck by Deborah Solomon's comments, in her review of Deirdre Bair's "Saul Steinberg: A Biography" (Nov. 25), that the book was so "riddled with factual errors" that it occasionally read like "a helpless plea for the presence of fact checkers at publishing houses, however cutback-conscious they may be".
I generally stick with novels, though I'll occasionally read nonfiction, like "Seabiscuit".
I would occasionally read a book about Hitch, and inevitably found the men who wrote the books quite irritating, quite interesting, quite fascinating... until suddenly there was, quite possibly, a plot.
When I was a business and technology columnist in Silicon Valley, a decade-long stint that ended in 2005, I'd occasionally read a paragraph or two – typically, my translations of technical concepts into plain English – to someone I'd interviewed, to ensure that I was getting the details right.
I have occasionally read an entire work without realising that there was a useful glossary at the end, or without finding (as in Michael Frayn's memoir) the section with the photographs, but I'm getting better at looking, and publishers are getting better at publishing them.
I would occasionally read Downbeat magazine back then.
I even occasionally read nonfiction, mostly about historical periods and/or people, finding that just as we know that history provides many compelling stories, real people make excellent characters.
It certainly had an impact and if it means people think they should occasionally read a good novel, that is something I'm very proud of".
