A Totally Normal Interview with Author Emily St. John Mandel

December 17, 2022 6:43 PM

Exactly what it says on the tin. A brief, but informative interview with the author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, in Slate, about what she's been up to this year.

A perhaps relevant Tweet from the author, plus the very current version of her Wikipedia page and talk page thereof.

posted by damayanti (14 comments total)

I enjoyed reading this primary source. It was informative and credible.
posted by allegedly at 6:53 PM on December 17, 2022 [15 favorites]

Reminds me of the early days when danah boyd wanted her name to be styled correctly on Wikipedia but couldn't because the NYT refuses to put anyone's name in lower case (among other dumb reasons they couldn't just do it upon her request). I think it took like 5 years to get corrected.
posted by muddgirl at 7:07 PM on December 17, 2022

A similar thing happened to Suzy Nakamura. Leave it up to Wikipedia admins to be the dregs of the hall monitors of society.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:30 PM on December 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

At the time of this comment, the wikipedia article reads "In 2022, Mandel shared that the marriage had ended in April, that she was legally divorced from him in November, and that she has a girlfriend."

Which strikes me as, like, maybe not a huge improvement, because what happens if she breaks up with her girlfriend? Will she need to do another interview?
posted by surlyben at 7:44 PM on December 17, 2022 [5 favorites]

Under that Suzy Nakamura tweet, Merrin Dungey chimes in to say she's having the same problem. I checked, and her wikipedia entry mentions that she's divorced and cites one of her tweets. I guess she got away with that because no wikipedia rules stickler was paying attention?

I don't know. I feel like there ought to be a fix for this, but I guess maybe it's symptomatic of deeper issues with what wikipedia accepts as evidence.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:10 PM on December 17, 2022

It feels to me line the solution should be, living biographies shouldn't have a current personal life section in the first place... on the other hand I definitely use wikipedia to look up if notable people are married with children because I'm nosy.
posted by muddgirl at 8:19 PM on December 17, 2022 [8 favorites]

Precedent.
posted by kickingtheground at 8:44 PM on December 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

This bit on the talk page is delightfully weird:

If this information is sufficiently public and important enough to be reported by reliable third-party sources, then it may be updated here.

Sure, she's not married anymore, but until that fact is "important" enough, we are going to pretend she is. I feel like maybe Wikipedia shouldn't be listing people's marital status if they won't take their word and court records as sufficient evidence.
posted by BungaDunga at 10:17 PM on December 17, 2022 [8 favorites]

They’ll accept court records, but only if you’re deceased.
posted by jmauro at 11:10 PM on December 17, 2022

But if you fake your death, and someone cites court records to change something on Wikipedia, will the editors then revert the change when you reveal that you were alive all along?
posted by Kattullus at 12:38 AM on December 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

I faked my own death to get out of a marriage...on Wikipedia.
posted by Literaryhero at 1:25 AM on December 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

Wow. That is insane. I loved Station Eleven, and was pretty meh on Sea of Tranquility (I actually read it this week), but I'm not a big celeb-interview person, and even less so author-interviews, so I had pretty much no interest in reading this one.

Then I read the comments here, and I'm glad I did. I think. The world's gone so weird. Then again, my first wedding was in the newspaper (back when that was a thing), and my second one wasn't, so anyone who googles me sees me linked to my ex forever, so I guess I can relate.

Thanks for posting this.
posted by Mchelly at 5:57 AM on December 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

So is this going to feature in her next book? Because it's pretty dystopian to have Wikipedia insist you are in a zombie marriage.
posted by basalganglia at 9:39 AM on December 19, 2022

Her books seem to contain echoes of the same characters. Maybe there will be a book about characters having to resolve multiple timelines, based on the metaphysical whims of Wikipedia editors who are forking up reality.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:04 AM on December 22, 2022