Great Non-Apologies of Our Time

Poppy Z. Brite, who recently got kicked off an online PZB fan community just for asking questions, was moved by factual errors in the Kirkus review of her upcoming new novel, Liquor, to write in and complain. The anonymous reviewer does the entire profession proud with his or her response:

"Brite is right in that the villain is a cokehead restaurant manager, not a cokehead chef, who bad mouths the hero from restaurant to restaurant until trying to kill him in a walkin refrigerator. The villain is so associated with food and chefs that I erred in describing him. I'm sorry I erred on this important piece of information that unnecessarily casts a slur upon chefs and put Brite in a snit."

And my personal favorite: "She's snippy because I did not see her writing through wine-tinted glasses and found her prose fizzless aside from her food arias."

I usually don't have too much problem with publications choosing not to have bylines on book reviews. In fact, I was deadset against bylines at Amazon when I was a review editor there because I felt they were an unnecessary distraction, though I didn't stick to that particular gun once the policy was formally in place. But when a reviewer is this boneheaded and petulant, especially about admitting his or her own sloppiness in dealing with the assigned text, I really do wish there were some increased level of accountability. (The whole letter is on Brite's LiveJournal for the 26th.