… it’s written. We all know that, yes? I’ve sometimes gone back and deleted something I decided was unnecessary or incorrect or just plain silly. But you can usually still find it “somewhere out there” (Heh. How I have the some “Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight …” in my head!). So I do try to be cautious about what I write.

Writing a book one would have to be even more careful, I would think.

In a telephone interview from Hong Kong, where he lives, Mr. Heymann said: “For me it’s beyond belief how any journalist in five pages can make so many factual mistakes. It’s shocking. Also, he really doesn’t understand the record business.”

Reviewers have cited inaccuracies in previous books by Mr. Lebrecht, who is a columnist for The Evening Standard of London and has a BBC radio program. In his 1997 book, “Who Killed Classical Music?,” Mr. Lebrecht said 750,000 people had heard Plácido Domingo sing in Central Park when the number was closer to 100,000, and called the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager Rudolf Bing a public servant.

Just as much, commentators have said that Mr. Lebrecht exaggerates, ignores nuance and indulges in hyperbole.

“Where others write, he romps, pursuing scandal, sex and ‘shame’ (a favorite word) with the alliterative abandon of a redtop tabloid,” The Sunday Times of London said in a review of “Maestros.”

Mr. Lebrecht’s Web site, normanlebrecht.com, says he has written 11 books about music. He has also written a novel, “The Song of Names,” which won the 2002 Whitbread First Novel Award.

I read The Song of Names and truly enjoyed it, btw. It did, for me anyway, have a tendency to “show off” sometimes, but I still found it fascinating and thought-provoking. I think anyone following a faith system would enjoy reading it and pondering. I think, in fact, it would be a great book club book for any “clubs of faith” (my term “COF” … cute, eh?).

But anyway, thanks to Chris Foley’s blog entry, I landed at the New York Times article about Norman Lebrecht’s most recent book. It really makes me want to go out and quickly buy the uncorrected version. (Hmmm. Good ploy by a publisher to sell two copies of the same book maybe? Naw. They wouldn’t ever do that.) It sounds as if you could get the original book here in the states for another week or so. Maybe I’ll head on over to my local Barnes and Noble just to see if they have it.

But anyway, enough of Mr. L. This is just a good reminder to me. I blog. I blog and people read. I’d better blog true. Even though I can’t imagine anyone would come after me (I’m not a well known blogger or oboist; my “audience” is wonderful but small) for what I write, but that’s not the point. Because of what I believe, I really have to “blog rightly”. It’s just the way it is.