Ben Schott
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Ben Schott is a British writer and author of the "Schott's Original Miscellany" series.
Born in London, England in 1974, Schott was educated at University College School, Hampstead. He went on to read Social and Political Sciences at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, where he took a double First. After Cambridge, Schott worked for the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, but left after a few months to become a photographer.
According to a recent Guardian interview by Decca Aitkenhead [1] "[Schott] could easily be mistaken for one of those ageless English actors - a plummy, self-deprecating Hugh Grant-type with obscure, antiquarian tastes ... The curious thing about Schott is that, despite his arcane tastes and instincts for privacy, he has a highly marketable persona: the blend of self-assurance and innocence you find in polished talkshow guests, and a nice turn of phrase."
He currently works for the OpEd page of the New York Times, and contributes to a range of other publications including the London Times, the Guardian, and Vanity Fair.
The Miscellany brand has been extended to Schott's Food & Drink Miscellany, Schott's Sporting, Gaming & Idling Miscellany and Schott's Almanac.
[edit] Accusations of plagiarism
On March 12, 2007, the New York Times appended the following editor's note to Schott's essay, "Confessions of a Book Abuser":
An essay in the Book Review on March 4, "Confessions of a Book Abuser," by Ben Schott, defended the ways people physically "mistreat" books. Readers have subsequently pointed out a number of resemblances between Schott's essay and "Never Do That to a Book," an essay on the same subject by Anne Fadiman that was part of her 1998 book "Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader."...
Questioned about the similarities, Schott, who has recently been contributing freelance work to The Times, said that he had never read Fadiman's essay before it was brought to his attention, also by a reader of the Book Review, and suggested that the thematic resemblances were a coincidental result of the narrowness of the topic. He maintains that the encounter with the Italian chambermaid took place as he described it, in 1989, when he was 15.
Had editors been aware of Fadiman's essay, the Book Review would not have published Schott's.
On March 24, 2007, Editor & Publisher revealed close similarities between Schott's opening paragraph and Fadiman's opening paragraph.
[edit] External links
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