Is there anything more gratifying to a nice, liberal academic than turning on NPR and hearing them talk about a book you have written? In that lovely, calm, reasonable NPR voice that makes you think all will be well with the world, if only we can all learn to talk to one another in that lovely, calm, reasonable voice?
And is there anything more aggravating than hearing that voice attribute the book you wrote to your male co-author? The very same voice that interviewed you for half an hour about this very book, of which you wrote the introduction, the first chapter, the last chapter, and the conclusion?
Here is what happened. Over the last year, I teamed up with Stefan Szymanski, a wildly successful sports economist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, to explore a very odd phenomenon: the screeching fury that, across the globe, greets the word “soccer.” Our book, It’s Football, Not Soccer (and Vice Versa): On the History, Emotion, and Ideology Behind One of the Internet’s Most Ferocious Debates, delves into internet culture, the history of sports and the history of words, the oddity of linguistic ostracism, the relationship between sports and nationalism, and so on. Its appendix lists hundreds of words used for the beautiful game around the world, such as ye’igiri kwasi (Amharic), or kokoompadhi (Ndonga). It’s light, but also serious; it was fun to write, and we’re proud of it.
So of course we were thrilled when Anders Kelto said he wanted to do a segment on it for All Things Considered. Stefan is an old hound at this kind of thing, but I got a huge kick out of going to the little studio in Ann Arbor to get my visitor’s badge, sit down in front of one of those big microphones, put on my headphones, and hear that soothing NPR voice in my ears. We talked about the book. We talked about internet culture. We talked about the history of anti-Americanism, and how it contributed to making “soccer,” a word coined in Oxford toward the end of the 19th century, now exiled from English lands. I read him some of the funniest online comments we had quoted (he had asked me over email to select a few). We talked about how rare it is to see the social sciences collaborate with the humanities. Stefan stressed the importance of the humanities to understanding sports culture. Anders Kelto enthusiastically agreed. The intersection of sports and the humanities, he said, was right up his alley. Wonderful.
Saturday morning, we got an email: “Hey Stefan and Silke, Just a quick heads up that NPR is planning to run the ‘football vs. soccer’ story today on Weekend All Things Considered, in case you want to listen live. It’s slated for 5:41 p.m., but just keep in mind that breaking news can cause schedules to change..... Oh, and because of the way the story came together, I was only able to use clips from Stefan — sorry, Silke!!!!!”
I get five exclamation marks! I suspect he would have dotted his i’s with hearts, if he could have. Not that he had anything to do with my erasure: The story just came together that way, you understand; there was no human involvement.
The blow to my ego was painful. As is the custom now, I shared my grief with Facebook friends, who were appropriately incensed. One of them wrote, “One would have thought that such a thing is no longer possible — especially at NPR,” which made me laugh. Bless him, though.
I spent the day quietly fuming, but resigned to my fate. After all, I do not have NPR voice, whereas Stefan has a British accent and an established reputation. All I have to show for myself is a measly book prize from the Modern Language Association. Nobody ever wants to hear from the humanities, anyway, including people who say that the humanities are really, really important.
Then I get a text from a colleague who is listening to the story. It starts with “O god,” and informs me that not only are there no quotes from me in the story, as I already know, but that the book is now attributed exclusively to Stefan. My friend has already written to NPR in protest. He thinks I should ask for a retraction.
That cannot be, I think; surely he misheard. Kelto talked to me for half an hour. He has the book. My name is on the cover. Because I wrote half of it. I get more emails and texts from other friends — I’m core NPR demographic, and so are all my friends. We’re the people who listen to All Things Considered on a Saturday afternoon. We donate to NPR (hah, good luck with that in the future, NPR). So I go online and find the segment, and there it is: “Stefan Szymanski is the author of a new book, ‘It’s Football, Not Soccer….’”
I listen to the segment in mounting disbelief. It turns out that Kelto wasn’t satisfied to air just one voice on this segment. One guy with a British accent won’t do. Whom else could he possibly ask to comment, to make this an appropriately diverse NPR segment? Yes, he finds another guy with a British accent, who repeats what the first guy with the British accent said. Which is the exact same thing that has been widely reported in two dozen media outlets in the past (usually quoting Stefan, who is very quotable).
I share this new development with what is by now my Facebook support group. Pretty much all of them write books, so they all understand what it means to hear on NPR about a book you have written but has now been written without you. A bunch of them write to NPR, including the formidably kind (and kindly formidable) Rebecca Solnit of Men Explain Things to Me fame, who knows a thing or two about how this stuff works. One of them demands that Kelto be suspended, but I think he should simply be sentenced to reporting only on women’s work for a year, and be banned from using British accents.
Stefan — who, I should stress, is the very model of a thoughtful, respectful collaborator — is just as appalled as I am. He writes to Kelto. I write to Kelto. Kelto responds to Stefan’s email. He is so sorry. “Calling Stefan ‘author’ instead of ‘co-author’ was an oversight,” he says. Ah, so all he did was leave out a “co-.” He’ll let us know if NPR issues a correction. (They did, here. ) There is not a single exclamation mark in the email.
I’m trying to make light of this, with middling success. At a time when women see their children ripped away from them, to be incarcerated in places unknown, having your work disappear on public radio ranks low in the hierarchy of atrocities. In the meantime, Anders Kelto is slated to start his 2018-19 Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan. His topic: “The connection between sports and social movements.” Perhaps he’ll interview me.
