Thread by @AviTheNaftali

Okay, here we go. This is boring but I guess I'm doing it.

This story of Eric Carle and his publisher "fighting bitterly over the stomachache scene" in The Very Hungry Caterpillar is fake. Eric Carle never said this, the interview is a parody, it was an April Fools joke. 1/?

The joke interview is from an April Fools issue of @parisreview. We know it was a parody, and not real, because Eric Carle's website lists the interviews he's done. This one is not on the list. And @parisreview hasn't re-tweeted the interview in memoriam.

theparisreview.org/blog/2015/04/0…

The problem is this parody quote (+ the whole interview) went VERY viral today, on all social media platforms, as news of Eric Carle's death spread. It's even been cited heavily in The Smithsonian by @LiviaGershon, as part of a tribute to his work.

Which feels... uncomfortable

Some context:

It's not that everyone suddenly got fooled by a clearly-defined parody. What actually happened is that at 1am EST, @_katherine_may_ shared a screencap from a book she liked, in tribute to Eric Carle, and it rapidly proliferated from there.

And the problem is that the book does not identify the interview as parody.

In 2019 @poetclare wrote a (by all accounts excellent) book titled FIERCE BAD RABBITS: THE TALES BEHIND CHILDREN'S PICTURE BOOKS and she inadvertently cited the interview there as legit.

Now...

...writing a book, especially nonfiction, is an enormous and arduous process, and if an author slips up with one or two details, *that is not their fault*.

Because the publisher should have employed a fact checker and they did not. I work in publishing. Trust me.

@poetclare did not fuck up. Her publisher did.

And also, imo, so did @parisreview fuck up. Just a bit. Their parody is such that you need detailed knowledge of the literary world's ecosystem to see the "obvious" jokes and find it funny.

So, no blame for thinking it real.

I am sure that @parisreview didn't mean to spread misinformation, and certainly didn't anticipate that a joke from 2015 would end up leading to The Smithsonian (of all places!!) citing their parody as Eric Carle's actual words

And the reason I'm kind of steamed about this is...

When I die, I hope that my obituary doesn’t include fake quotes attributed to me that were actually made up by people poking fun at me, y’know?

Attempts at tribute were turned into a mockery instead. And that... feels unkind.

And based on past experience with misinformation... if this isn't aggressively corrected VERY soon by the key actors involved, this damn interview poking fun at Eric Carle is going to end up in biopics etc about Eric Carle and it'll become a Sisyphean task to ever fully debunk it

@parisreview I ask you to strongly consider adding a tagline, at the top of this interview, that clearly identifies this interview as a parody. It is being cited in major magazines as real, in their memorial tributes to Eric Carle, and that feels... off.

theparisreview.org/the-art-of-fic…

@parisreview Please be honest to Eric Carle's memory. Please add the tagline.

Yes, it ruins the joke to clarify that, no, Eric Carle did not actually cite "Judeo-Christian ethics" when discussing The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Abetting misinformation is not worth the joke.

@parisreview Given how this has spread, I think it becomes unethical to leave the interview up without a clarifying tagline.

I know it is embarrassing to do it... and an annoyance, and an effort!

But it is wildly selfish to prioritize ease & inaction over an author's legacy.

@poetclare I think you very much need to reach out to Penguin and ask them to submit a correction for reprints of FIERCE BAD RABBITS, and clarify that this Eric Carle interview is a parody, and was cited in error.

It is, again, embarrassing to do this. I know! But it's important

@poetclare And I do think it has to be a correction, not just a retraction. If the reference to the fake interview is just deleted — then there will still be biographies & articles of Eric Carle that end up citing the older editions of FIERCE BAD RABBITS.

So I do think that...

...it needs to be deleted *and* clarified, somewhere within the book, that previous editions accidentally cited an interview that Eric Carle never gave, which was a parody in @parisreview, and this has been corrected going forward.

What is perhaps most frustrating, to me, is whenever misinformation like this goes viral, the people who are MOST key to spreading it — the accounts with lots of followers, whose tweets go viral — are often so extremely reluctant to admit and correct it!

I'm like... why?!

Why are people so afraid to say "oops!"

And why are people afraid of looking briefly foolish & having to retract something they said, even if inaction means that scores of tweets and tributes to Eric Carle's memory keep citing a parody of the man, instead of his actual words??

I think it is very brave to stand up and to admit being wrong when you are wrong.

And if it turns out Eric Carle actually gave an interview to @parisreview and did actually say everything in that delirious interview, I will be delighted and will eat my words with joy.

One addendum:

Fatshaming & fatphobia is noxious, and I will not stand for it.

Some people read the parody interview without knowing it was fake, & they found this section to be touching and meaningful.

Without context, it IS. I don't care what @parisreview's intent was.

As a child, I did think the caterpillar got the stomachache from the eating of human foods not meant for caterpillars, and many on Twitter have shared this impression.

So I do think the @parisreview parody intended to riff on that reading — even if it muddled it in execution.

And if we're able to recontextualize the @parisreview parody interview into something that actually speaks meaningfully to us about an important subject, then — well, why the fuck not?

As Roland Barthes once said in a @parisreview interview (conveniently given on April 1)...

/END

An update:

Update 2: @poetclare did due diligence & cleared the interview with PR — PR just didn't communicate it was parody despite knowing how the interview would be used. (Possibly the person who cleared it didn't know it was a joke! It was a very dry parody.)

I'm dropping a link to @poetclare's book, FIERCE BAD RABBITS, because I've heard only good things about it, and we could all use a good read. I encourage you to show it some love!

amazon.com/Fierce-Bad-Rab…