It will be interesting to see what Oliver Sacks’ publishers do, now they know him to have been a fraud. At the other end of the scale, David Walliams’ publishers severed all connections with him after personal behaviour allegations — despite his books having sold in the millions for them. It’s a tough time to be a publisher.
It’s also a tough time to be a reader, when you learn you’ve been codded by a writer you adore. You can’t burn the books. Book-burning feels like sacrilege. Fahrenheit 451 and all that. But, when you’ve discovered that a writer you admired, a medical pioneer and poet whose works you collected, was actually a charlatan, you can’t leave their books on your shelves, shoulder to shoulder with the good guys. You just can’t.
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