I still love you Dave

I've been reading You Shall Know Our Velocity! by one of my favorite literary heroes, Dave Eggers. Now read this paragraph:

I understood the Earth's shadow on the moon. I knew that the Earth was hiding most of the moon from the light this night, leaving a curved white blade. What I didn't know was why the moon and its shadow should be so clear, the lines so clean. The sun wasn't at all clear; its outline was debatable and changing. And though I know the sun is gas and the moon is rock, still I wonder why the moon's circumference would be so clear, its edges so crisp--cut from cardboard with scissors. (38)

Beautifully written, right? Right. Inarguably. Assuredly. The problem is in the editing, the factchecking! Dave Eggers is a fantastic writer, but it's just not at all true that the earth's shadow is responsible for the phases of the moon. It's the light from the sun and the moon's position relative to it. The earth and moon don't orbit on the same plane (though twice a year, when the moon does pass--briefly--through earth's shadow, a lunar eclipse occurs). Didn't any editor--at McSweeney's, or Vintage, or during its retitling and then unretitling--notice this? Or at least feel at all peculiar about the assertion? Oh well--I didn't know what a pachinko was. Maybe everyone just trusted him. Anyway.

Also, I do understand that this misconception could quite possibly be intentional, intended to represent the character Will's idea/surety that the earth's shadow causes the moon's phases. Or maybe later on in the novel (because I haven't finished it yet) something else is somehow revealed, and I will eat my criticism (and if the book does make me take this back, I'll come back and edit this post and retract my statements and apologize profusely to the great virtual Eggers-god).

Okay, back to the lovely book.