His Way

Dear Readers,

Back in December 2013, I broke from tradition and wrote my blog about one book only.  This month I will do the same.
  
Not long ago I read Paul Anka's autobiography entitled My Way.  I found his story interesting but more so, I found lots of errors.  I shall categorize these mistakes into three headings:  Poor Editing, Wrong Word, and Misspelling. 

Mr. Anka co-wrote his book with the help of David Dalton.  [Wikipedia reference:  David Dalton is a New York Times author and a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine. He has written several books, including co-writing Paul Anka's autobiography My Way.]  I would have expected better editing with his help but I was wrong.  Read on . . .

Poor Editing
Example:  In comparing ambitious teens, he writes, They did a survey of kids in England about what they expected to do in life.  They were asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?  Many just said, "I want to be famous."  *Did you notice?   There was no close quote mark after his citation.

Example:  He writes about his experiences living and working in Las Vegas.  Here, he says, "There were the spectacular show girl acts called production shows at the Stardust, the Lido, and the Copa Room.  The showgirls would often open the show at the Copa sands."  *No capital is used for the name of the casino.  Shameful mistake.

Example:  "So no sooner had the first casino began rolling the bones that another great American type showed up..."  *Two errors here:  the past participle should be "begun" and "that" should be "than." 

Example:  Anka wrote the song "My Way" specifically for Frank Sinatra.  The day of recording, he writes, "Frank and and his daughter, Nancy, went into the studio on December 30."  *This is obvious.

Example:  Paul becomes part owner of his own club.  Believing that some of their employees are stealing from them, "Marty puts down a twenty-dollar bill, the bartender takes it, gives us the change but doesn't ring it up the tab on the cash register."  *Here, he has used a pronoun [it] but then mentions the noun as well.  No one noticed this?

Example:  Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia is a frequent visitor to Anka's club Jubilation.  He writes, "There was an empty table next to his with couple of seats ..."   *He left out the "a."

Example:  Referring to mobster Johnny Roselli, Paul writes, "Because of his looks he moved easily in the Hollywood scene in California, and because of his links with the mob they eventually moved him out to Vegas."  *Personally, I believe that commas should be used here.

Example:  On a visit to Lake Como with Steve Wynn, he writes, "When we got up there we started tooling around the lake on a friend of ours boat."  *This is an awkward sentence to begin with but I think it should be "a friend of ours' boat."  Without the boat, it sounds like they were riding on top of the friend.

All of the above-mentioned mistakes should have been caught by a good editor. 

Wrong Word
Example:  "I shared the triumphs from what was a rough journey for my buddy Steve and Skip right down to the ground-breaking in November 1998 ..."  *I count two buddies, don't you?

Example:  Anka tries to show what a good deed he did for a group of older ladies living in his Las Vegas neighborhood.  He mentions that the homes "were owned by elderly widowers" and that some unscrupulous builders "start coming at us to buy our properties and they go after the women."
*Aren't widowers men and widows women?

Example:  He describes what life was like working in Vegas:  "There's a gorgeous woman perching at the bar in a low-cut dress sipping a martini."  *I assume he meant to say that she was "perched" or maybe "parched."  In Las Vegas, that would make sense.

Example:  In describing a rogue agent working in Vegas who screws a hooker and then refuses to pay her,  he says that she calls security and they go after the guy.  "They stripped him down bare nude..."
*This is simply redundant, repetitive and he is repeating himself.

Example:  This same rogue agent asked his boss for money to buy tires for his car.  The boss said no so the agent "went to the gas station where he knew the owner very well and got four new sets of tires for his car..."  *My guess is that he only needed one new set of four tires.

Misspelling
Example:  In 2005, Anka's friend Steve Wynn is thinking of what to call his hotel-casino.  "He originally wanted to call it 'La Reve,' which means 'the dream' in French."  *He is correct about the translation, but he used the wrong article.  It is actually Le Reve.

Example:  He talks about the melody of a French song that became the tune for his song "My Way."  He says, "It had been written in February of that year [1967] by Gilles Thibautt and Jacque Revaux."
*Thibault is the correct way to spell this man's last name and Jacques is the correct way to spell the other man's first name.  It appears that someone has a problem with French spelling.

Example:  Paul talks about Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana who is very powerful in Las Vegas circa 1960.  "Sam was seen all over town with one of the MaGuire sisters, Phyllis ..."  *The sisters' last name is McGuire.  Unlike Paul and his editors, I did the research for all three of these examples. 

 My friend who had read the book and lent it to me had this comment:  It's like he spoke into a tape recorder letting his thoughts flow, and someone [David Dalton?] just wrote down what he said
without checking for spelling, punctuation or continuity.  I agree.
 And I know that if I were having a book published, I would want to make sure it was edited properly.