What can an editor trust?

by Kelvin Smith

“All I knew now, in my moment of greatest confusion and suspicion, was that my heart was beating very fast indeed. Rereading the fragment, I felt that excitement in my blood which is the only thing an editor should ever trust.”

So says Sarah Elizabeth Jane Wode-Douglass in Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake. Is she exhibiting exactly the kind of error of judgement that tempts Weiss into his error over the McCorkle hoax? Is this a lesson for writers on how to blag your way into print or a warning to over-eager editors?

Peter Carey, My Life as a Fake, 2003