Americana: Name Calling

For 16 years, the Library of Congress has incorrectly listed British Author Harry Patterson’s first name as “Henry.” Finally, one of his U.S. publishers, Stein & Day, asked the library to set the record straight. Replied Ben Tucker, Chief of the Office for Descriptive Cataloging Policy: “I wish to thank you for enabling us to improve our records.” Henceforth, he said, the author would be listed not as Harry Patterson or even Henry Patterson but as “Jack Higgins,” the pseudonym under which he wrote several bestselling thrillers, including The Eagle Has Landed, for a Stein competitor, Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Tucker explained that under the abstruse cataloguing rules adopted by the library in 1967, authors are listed by the “name used predominantly” in their works, no matter what their real name may be. Stein has published two novel under the name Harry Patterson, while other U.S. publishing houses have produced at least 17 books by Jack Higgins Thus Stein lost the name game. Moreover, said Tucker, if Stein & Day did not go along with the verdict, the firm could be excluded from the library’s cataloguing program. “The bureaucratic mind gone mad,” sputtered Publisher Sol Stein in an angry letter of appeal to Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin. “I beg you to stop the flow of bureaucratic idiocy.”