Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel prize-winning author, has slammed the New York Times for publishing what he called “slanderous and perfidious” gossip that, it transpired, was culled from the Daily Mail’s website.
In a letter to the editor, Vargas Llosa complained that the Times’s review of his latest book stated that he had announced his relationship with Isabel Preysler - described as “a Filipino-born Spanish socialite, model and former beauty queen known as the Pearl of Manila” - on Twitter.
It further stated that Vargas Llosa had “sold related photographs and an ‘exclusive’ story” to the Spanish magazine, Hola! “for a large amount of money.”
Vargas Llosa said in his letter:
“I have never had a Twitter account, and I have never posted and never will post anything on any Twitter account. I have never sold a photo or story to Hola! magazine or any other outlet in connection with any relationship or personal matter.
I am flabbergasted to learn that this kind of gossip can work its way into a respectable publication such as the Book Review.”
Editors at the New York Times, after investigating the complaint, discovered that the reviewer had relied for his information on a Mail Online article headlined “Nobel prize-winning novelist leaves his wife of 50 years for the 64-year-old mother of Enrique Iglesias dubbed the ‘Pearl of Manila’”, published in early July.
The Times, in a statement appended to the offending review, conceded that neither the reviewer, Joshua Cohen, nor his editors had independently verified the statements about Vargas Llosa and Preysler. It added:
“Using such information is at odds with the Times’s journalistic standards, and it should not have been included in the review.”
It should also be noted that Cohen’s review of Vargas Llosa’s book, a work of non-fiction entitled Notes on the death of culture: essays on spectacle and society, was far from ecstatic.
Meanwhile, the Mail’s article, with its claim that the writer had “used his official Twitter account to confirm he had been seeing Preysler for eight months”, remains online in its original form.
Sources: New York Times: (1) and (2)/Daily Mail Hat tip: Poynter
