‘And another thing…’

I need to try to stop doing this, but I can’t help being irritated by the failure of editors to intervene when a phrase in a text is glaringly wrong. We writers make mistakes occasionally and overlook things: one of the reasons is that the literary industry encourages excess (‘…we need at least 350 pages to make it economic…’) and too seldom pays attention to wordcraft.

I recently bought, too hurriedly, a copy of Name, a short novel by Constance Debré, endorsed on the cover, unfortunately, by Olivia Laing and Colm Tóibín among others. I made it as far as page 35, where I read the narrator’s comment about the bourgeoisie, described as ‘an infinitely large sample of the population’. This isn’t me being picky: it’s sloppy at best.

I don’t understand how a serious writer can describe a sample as infinitely large, but if they do, how a translator can fail to draw attention to it, or a publisher’s editor (or other reader) can overlook it. I can’t read any further, the book goes to a charity shop. Sigh. Rant over.