Tarot misinformation in books that should know better

[Le Fanu]

I came across an interesting looking book in my local bookstore today; Coco Chanel by Justine Picardie. I had a flick through and was very surprised to find, on page 19, a picture of Lenormand card number 10, the Scythe. Next to it was written;

Chanel's number 10 tarot card, one of the many symbols of wheat which she kept in her Rua Cambon apartment.

tarot??

The book was shortlisted for the National Book Awards" and is described on the cover as "authoritative."

This error really annoyed me. How sloppy the research must be. How on earth could that have slipped through all revisions? I actually found a reference to it on this blog.

I wonder how many of you have found tarot gaffs in books - supposedly "researched" - that should know better? These things actually annoy me more than those silly "myths" which are peddled around...

 

[greatdane]

Alas, Le Fanu

I think more often there are mistakes then they get it right. Books, movies, any type of media, I think that anyone using tarot or oracles of any type to make a statement generally have no idea what they're talking about. Any card that isn't from a regular playing card deck probably looks like tarot to them. The majority of people know little to nothing about tarot and don't seem to care to get it right, thinking no one will notice anyway. Sad.

 

[Debra]

Why do you say the book should know better? It's about Coco Chanel, not fortune-telling and anyway seems a harmless and trivial error.

 

[Chiriku]

I think more often there are mistakes then they get it right. Books, movies, any type of media, I think that anyone using tarot or oracles of any type to make a statement generally have no idea what they're talking about. Any card that isn't from a regular playing card deck probably looks like tarot to them. The majority of people know little to nothing about tarot and don't seem to care to get it right, thinking no one will notice anyway. Sad.

Agreed, with all of it.

Why do you say the book should know better? It's about Coco Chanel, not fortune-telling and anyway seems a harmless and trivial error.

I agree that the book shouldn't know better, but not that the error's harmless or trivial. Tarot may not have started out, historically, as a "belief system" but for several decades now, it has been closely linked to many--though not all---practitioners' spiritual life and beliefs about the universe, etc.

To me, this mistake is along the same lines as saying something like "Genghis Khan, the Persian warrior," or "The Torah, holy book of Islam."

Even if it weren't linked to spirituality or so forth (as in the Khan example), mistakes about facts that can easily be looked up or verified is off-putting to me and makes me lose interest in the author's work and sometimes even the author himself or herself.

 

[Le Fanu]

Why do you say the book should know better? It's about Coco Chanel, not fortune-telling and anyway seems a harmless and trivial error.

To be honest, I think Coco Chanel is a big enough figure to warrant a serious biography, (which this book presents itself as). She was revolutionary in her way. Very much so, and was one of the big characters in early 20th Century culture, friend of Picasso, Stravinsky etc etc. I don't think of her as a lightweight. Plus Chanel was into divination and fortune telling. She was interested in cartomancy and kept a scrying ball (gift from the Duke of Windsor) on her desk. So it is actually a part of her identity and was something that I would say was a "mild" influence on her way of thinking. So you'd think a biographer would actually take it on board as something (relatively) important.

I think misinformation like this in a crappy TV guide/ magazine and a biography (which wants to take itself seriously) are very different. You kind of expect it in the former. There are many biographies of Chanel around. With an error like this, what makes me think this one would be a good one to buy?

I suppose it's a trivial error in some ways (in the way any ill-researched generalisation/guess is not serious), but it just screams "shoddy" to me...

 

[Laura Borealis]

That's pretty bad -- if they found this particular card important enough to Coco Chanel's life to show a photo of it, they should have identified it correctly. Tsk tsk!


I ran across one of these gaffs recently (again! I've noticed it before). In John Crowley's Little, Big (a novel beloved by many members here) he gets the number of trumps wrong -- I think he says 20 -- and also the number of cards in the full deck -- 72, I think. And he IS one who should know better. Granted, he once claimed in an interview that he knows little about tarot. But his books are full of careful research on hermetic, arcane, occult matters. He can get tiny details of Doctor Dee's life and the writings of Giordano Bruno right, but the number of cards in a tarot deck fell through the mental cracks.

 

[Melia]

To be honest, I think Coco Chanel is a big enough figure to warrant a serious biography, (which this book presents itself as). She was revolutionary in her way. Very much so, and was one of the big characters in early 20th Century culture, friend of Picasso, Stravinsky etc etc. I don't think of her as a lightweight. Plus Chanel was into divination and fortune telling. She was interested in cartomancy and kept a scrying ball (gift from the Duke of Windsor) on her desk. So it is actually a part of her identity and was something that I would say was a "mild" influence on her way of thinking. So you'd think a biographer would actually take it on board as something (relatively) important.

I think misinformation like this in a crappy TV guide/ magazine and a biography (which wants to take itself seriously) are very different. You kind of expect it in the former. There are many biographies of Chanel around. With an error like this, what makes me think this one would be a good one to buy?

I suppose it's a trivial error in some ways (in the way any ill-researched generalisation/guess is not serious), but it just screams "shoddy" to me...

Errors in books are common. Writers and editors are human too. This error was a pretty mild one. Shoddy to me is finding several errors in the one book.

You're right, Chanel was not a lightweight. She created my signature scent - Chanel 19. I've got to love her for that. Apart from Stravinsky et al, she also cozied up to the Nazis. I didn't know though she was into cartomancy, but then a lot of prominent people are - you just don't hear about it. The reincarnated Chanel today is just as much a revolutionary figure, though is not well liked by many. She still has creative talents (well some think so).

 

[vee]

I'm not surprised that there was an error in the book, they seem to rush books to print faster and faster every year. I am surprised though if it's a later edition of the book and the error wasn't corrected. Was it the paperback or was it an older copy?

I don't think it's a HUGE deal, certainly not on par with misidentifying the most important man in world history or one of the holy books of one of the world's biggest religions, but I do agree it's annoying. Tarot is such a niche "hobby" (I know its more complicated than that for most of us but for the sake of simpification) that there is going to inevitably be a lot of misinformation about it.

 

[tarotbear]

Chill!

Many books contain errors. Are we all being a tad too touchy about this merely because we are Tarotists? I believe so, IMHO. I mean, if we are chefs and a cookbook told us to use a dozen ostrich eggs instead of a dozen duck eggs, the chefs would be up in arms but the Tarotists probably wouldn't give a damn. Who gives a damn if it's a Tarot card or not when you don't know anything about tarot?

Do you remember a TV commercial several years back for a pre-made pizza round where the announcer said 'You can even top it with Spaghetti' and they showed a picture of a pizza topped with ziti? Every Italian in the world knew they were wrong, but obviously the producer didn't! Or the commercial for the quilted toilet paper where the women were knitting and not quilting? Someone didn't know the difference! There were write-in and call-in campaigns and these things got corrected, but I don't think anyone had a hissy-fit over it.