I Meant to do That

by Kathryn Miller Haines

You know what an actor’s nightmare is, right? It’s when it's opening night and you’re in a play that you’ve never seen a script for. And sometimes you're not wearing pants. I always imagined that a writer’s nightmare would be that a book of mine would go to press with mistakes. Not a missed comma here or there, but an obvious error I made and didn’t catch.

Well it happened to me. And I feel like a complete moron.

I’m not going to tell you what the error is in hopes that you’re a part of the reading population it won’t matter to. I would love to blame this on my editor. Or my copy editor. Or my critique group. Or my husband (when in doubt, he’s a marvelous scapegoat). But it’s nobody’s fault but my own.

How did it happen? I’m a fast writer and sometimes, rather than verifying a detail, I plug something in thinking I’ll go back and change it later so that I don’t interrupt my flow. In this instance, I used a placeholder and then forgot about it because…well….because there were a thousand other details in my mind that I needed to attend to. And I’m an idiot. As I read draft after draft what should’ve stuck out like a sore thumb, insidiously wedged its way into the text and became a legitimate part of the story.

Someone else caught the error, the last person I’d want to have pointing out my mistakes, but by that point the book was on its way to the printer and it was too late, and too expensive, to do anything about it.

My editor assures me this happens with every book. In fact, there’s even a website devoted to it, where I find myself in the illustrious company of Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, and Steven King. In truth it’s a small thing. A single detail. A poorly chosen word that would only rip certain people out of the story and temporarily at that. But I’m one of them and that sucks. This will always be The Book with the Mistake in It.

I’ve mourned the error the way you mourn a fresh scar you know won’t go away. I know it could be much worse. I could’ve been caught plagiarizing scholarly research on black-footed ferrets. I could’ve carefully created a murder scene that so closely mimicked a real life crime that the authorities realized that there was a very good chance I had actually murdered someone. I could’ve erroneously called my book a memoir. I could’ve accidentally inserted a block of text from personal correspondence that revealed my long-standing love of prostitutes and how for years I’ve been client number 9 at a well-known brothel. In the grand scheme of things this is tiny.

When I screw up on stage I try to make a bit out of it. Let the audience know I know I messed up and share -- rather than suffer-- the laughter. You’ll leave them wondering if you didn’t intend to do it all along. I made a decision to do something similar with this mistake. I've reclaimed it. It’s part of the story now and by golly I’m going to do something with it.

But you better believe I've gone over ever manuscript since with a fine toothed comb.

So hit me with your best mistake -- writing or otherwise. How'd you make lemonade of that lemon?

The Body Electric

by Kathy Miller Haines

There’s been a lot of discussion in Pittsburgh lately about the upcoming exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center, "Bodies: The Exhibition.” For the uninitiated, the exhibit consists of dissected human corpses, organs, and fetuses that have been plasticized in a polymer solution to preserve them. The process allows for a unique look at body systems we wouldn’t otherwise be privy to.

In other words, it’s awesome.

The source of controversy is multi-fold. There are of course religious objections to exhibits of this sort, but the primary issue for many people are questions that have arisen about where the bodies being used in the exhibit came from in the first place. There is concern that these anonymous corpses are in fact executed Chinese political prisoners who had no choice in being used in this manner and that the thriving plastination industry may be further driving China' s illegal organ trade. Lest these worries seem far-fetched, the specimens are unidentified, unclaimed bodies “on-loan” from Dalian Medical Center in China.

(Can you imagine the paperwork involved in borrowing a body? I had to fill out five forms to rent a carpet cleaner.)

There is further controversy about what constitutes art and whether or not observing human bodies on display in this way desensitizes us. For the record, I don’t think it does (anyone who views this exhibit dispassionately walked into the exhibit that way). I must confess, though, that when I heard that school children were being brought to the exhibit I was alarmed, not for the kids’ sakes, but for the bodies themselves. I’d hate to think of my own corporeal being on display while a bunch of twelve year old snicker about my saddlebags.

I first learned of exhibits of this type in a 2001 New Yorker article. That article wasn’t profiling this particular exhibit, but the work of Dr. Gunther von Hagens, who invented plastination (pity the poor man’s pets) and created exhibits using corpses as described above, but typically arranged with more artistic flair. The difference between von Hagens’s work and that of the exhibit at the Carnegie is that von Hagens specimens are all donations. In fact, if you go to his website, there is information about how you can donate your own body for a future exhibit (talk about being part of an exhibitionist society: at one point the donations had to be halted because of the overwhelming response). The extensive FAQ provided for the sites hosting “Body Worlds” (the name of von Hagens’s exhibits) delves into the ethical issues and makes it very clear from whence the bodies came.

After reading about von Hagens, I desperately wanted to see “Body Worlds,” which was only abroad at the time. When I heard about the upcoming exhibit at the Carnegie, I assumed that it was one and the same (how many people are dipping bodies into polymer and displaying them, I asked myself). It was only after hearing about the controversy that I realized that these were two competing exhibitions (and there are many more; China now has 400 of these plastination factories and von Hagens is, understandably, disturbed that people have taken his idea and run with it).

I’ve been second guessing my enthusiasm for “Bodies: The Exhibition” ever since. I don’t have any problem with people wanting to see this sort of thing (I’ll be the first in line if “Body Worlds” ever makes it here) but I do have concerns about honoring the wishes of the dead. These “specimens” were real human beings and the fact that they may have been placed on display by a choice that was not their own bothers me. The fact that their deaths may have been at the hands of their government mortifies me.

And I don’t even want to get into why a museum would choose between an exhibit that could document the source of its specimens and one that could not.

I’ve long been fascinated by the sideshows of the 19th an early 20th century, when medical specimens were a huge part of the draw. People came from all over to see congenital defects and racial or ethnic anomalies, showing very little compassion in their quest to be amazed and entertained. Because they were considered freaks of nature, there was often no other means of employment for the people who populated these exhibits; one could hardly say they were there by choice. I fear that we’re approaching the same territory, putting people on display who have no voice in the matter because their society has eliminated their right to speak.

That isn't about desensitizing the audience; it's about taking away the humanity of the people we're looking at.