W.J. Elvin III - The Art of the Prank

January 8, 2010December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #46: Who Discovered the Americas? Egyptians, Irish, Chinese and Your Uncle Bob

Here’s the forty-sixth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #46: Who Discovered the Americas? Egyptians, Irish, Chinese and Your Uncle Bob
By W.J. Elvin III
January 8, 2010

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“Nowhere, alas, does bullshit and bang-me-arse archaeology flourish so well these days as in America where foolish fantasies pour from the press every month and sell like hotcakes.”

-Noted archaeologist and detective novelist Glyn Daniel, quoted in the book, Fantastic Archaeology.

Do you get lured off down a rabbit hole by claims of lost civilizations, fantastic explorations, bizarre archaeological discoveries and all that? Welcome to the club.

My membership dues have included books I’ve bought, bang-me-arse fabrications or not, about visits to the Americas by Chinese, Welsh, Scot, Irish, Basque, Libyan, Egyptian, Norse and other travelers in the days before Columbus.

There’s no shortage of fascinating tales. Take, for instance, the one about the Roman-Jewish settlement in the Tucson area, dating back a thousand years or so. Has to be a hoax, but if so how did it fool several respectable investigators? Continue reading “LiteratEye #46: Who Discovered the Americas? Egyptians, Irish, Chinese and Your Uncle Bob”

January 6, 2010December 15, 2023

Satirists Hack Two World Leaders’ Web Sites

Submitted by W.J. Elvin III as seen on The Slatest, January 5, 2009:

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In Spain and Iran, Hackers Target Leaders’ Web Sites

Hackers targeted the Web sites of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in unrelated””and equally entertaining””Internet attacks Tuesday. According to tech blogger Austin Heap, Iranian hackers “had their way with Ahmadinejad’s web servers” this morning, and posted a text file on the president’s official site imploring God to get rid of Ahmadinejad this year since he’s already taken care of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. “Please, please, don’t forget my favorite politician”” Ahmadinejad and my favorite dictator””Khamenei in the year 2010. Thank you.” The site went down under mysterious circumstances several hours later. Also Tuesday, hackers attacked the official European Union Web site of Spanish Prime Minister and temporary EU President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, posting an image of Rowan Atkinson’s character Mr. Bean. According to Reuters, “the supposed resemblance of the bumbling slapstick character “¦ to Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has been a running joke in Spain for years.” Zapatero’s site has since been restored.

Read the original stories in AustinHeap and Foreign Policy

image: AustinHeap

January 1, 2010December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #45: How to Keep That New Year’s Resolution? Take It Along to a Desert Island

Here’s the forty-fifth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #45: How to Keep That New Year’s Resolution? Take It Along to a Desert Island
By W.J. Elvin III
January 1, 2010

viewoftown-copia-200 Happy New Year to all, especially to those who’ve signed on as friends at the Art of the Prank site on Facebook – it’s intriguing to see some of the people you’re writing to, or to try to guess who might be behind that weird picture.

So, have you made a resolution never to do that again, whatever that was? Good luck. Probably the only way to keep your resolution is to go live on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe.

But then, Robinson Crusoe is a literary character, he never really existed. As mentioned in LiteratEye #22, the story is based largely on the adventures of Alexander Selkirk, marooned on the island then known as Aguas Buenas, off the coast of Chile.

It is now officially Robinson Crusoe Island.

Daniel Defoe took a lot of heat for deception because he presented the book as a true memoir, the work of Crusoe.

Even to this day he takes heat for it, as evidenced in Nicholson Baker’s comments in the Columbia Journalism Review: “Robinson Crusoe is Defoe’s most famous hoax. We describe it as a novel, of course, but it wasn’t born that way. On its 1719 title page, the book was billed as the strange, surprising adventures of a mariner who lived all alone for eight-and-twenty years on an uninhabited island, ‘Written by H I M S E L F’-and people at first took this claim for truth and bought thousands of copies.”

Baker passes along a quote from early Defoe biographer William Minto: “He was a great, a truly great liar, perhaps the greatest liar that ever lived.” Continue reading “LiteratEye #45: How to Keep That New Year’s Resolution? Take It Along to a Desert Island”

December 29, 2009December 15, 2023

Kennedy Photo Hoax

Submitted by W.J. Elvin III as seen on The Slatest:

TMZ Duped by Kennedy Photo Hoax, December 28, 2009

Early Monday morning, celebrity gossip site TMZ published a photo it claimed could have “changed world history.” The photo, according to the Web site and the experts it marshaled, showed former President John F. Kennedy surrounded by naked women on a yacht.

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Alas, the picture is not what it seemed. The photograph ran as part of a Playboy photo spread in 1967, four years after JFK was assassinated. TMZ conceded its error Monday afternoon, once a tipster alerted them to the fact. The 1967 photograph accompanied a story titled “Playboy’s Charter Yacht Party: How to Have a Ball on the Briny with an Able-Bodies Complement of Ship’s Belles.” The photo fakery may sour TMZ‘s brand, which had garnered credit for being the first to accurately report the deaths of Michael Jackson and, more recently, actress Brittany Murphy.

December 18, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #44: Disinformation: Did Jewish Author J.D. Salinger Really Marry a Nazi Official after World War II?

Here’s the forty-fourth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #44: Disinformation: Did Jewish Author J.D. Salinger Really Marry a Nazi Official after World War II?
By W.J. Elvin III
December 18, 2009

200px-JD_Salinger J.D. Salinger, the quirky author of The Catcher in the Rye fame, slammed a door in the world’s face many long years ago. But he pops up now and then, mostly in the form of legal representatives, to whomp up on anyone invading his privacy.

Salinger is very much in the news these days due to his efforts to block publication of a “copycat” book.

There is another story, though, that hasn’t caught the attention of literary pundits in the U.S. – yet. It relates to an allegation in his daughter’s highly publicized “tell all” biography, Dream Catcher: A Memoir.

Just a bit of background: The Catcher in the Rye, as readers from Melbourne to Murmansk certainly know without it being said, is one of the most influential books of the last century.

Most survivors of the education mill of the ’60s and ’70s have probably read the book, either because it was required or because it was forbidden. Having sold 35 million copies, sales figures still run to 250,000 copies a year.

The book was denounced as a corrupter of youth. And, given certain sinister associations, maybe the tight-sphincter set was on to something in fearing its impact.

Among obsessive Catcher fans were John Hinckley, who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan, and Mark David Chapman, who assassinated John Lennon.

But that’s another story, and so, back to the “Salinger married a Nazi” allegation. Continue reading “LiteratEye #44: Disinformation: Did Jewish Author J.D. Salinger Really Marry a Nazi Official after World War II?”