Literary Hoaxes - The Art of the Prank

October 2, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #33: The Horror Story Byron Didn’t Write Made His Rep as a Vampire

Here’s the thirty third 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 #33: The Horror Story Byron Didn’t Write Made His Rep as a Vampire
By W.J. Elvin III
October 2, 2009

bela_200 “Everywhere you look in entertainment these days, you see vampires.” It was cultural critic Johanna Schneller who stuck her neck out to make that observation, quoted in The Week magazine.

Vampires everywhere. Well, then, wouldn’t it be just the right time for a film focusing on suspicions that literature’s premier bad boy, George Gordon, Lord Byron, was a vampire?

Yes, of course, you say, the more vampires the better. And by the way, who is this GGLB character?

Byron is considered a poetic genius on par with greats like Milton or Dryden, but it is his orgiastic personal life that draws most of the attention he gets today. His work still sells – I just saw a six-volume set of his collected works on eBay. He wrote some exquisite, memorable lines – ‘She walks in beauty like the night’ – but the language of the bulk of it is undoubtedly foreign to modern readers.

It used to be, you described someone as “Byronic” and any literate person knew just what you meant. The brooding, mysterious, rebellious poet of later times is a knock-off of the image Byron created for himself.

He was the sort modern publishers hunger for, a master of manipulating his own image into a creation that fascinated the public, thereby enhancing sales of his books. Of recent authors, he calls to mind Ernest Hemingway, a writer who lived much of his legend but also made certain he got plenty of publicity as a result. Continue reading “LiteratEye #33: The Horror Story Byron Didn’t Write Made His Rep as a Vampire”

September 25, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #32: Pranks With a Novel Twist — An Interview with Elusive Wu Ming

Here’s the thirty second 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 #32: Pranks With a Novel Twist — An Interview with Elusive Wu Ming
By W.J. Elvin III
September 25, 2009

band0-200 The counter-cultural creative arts collective Wu Ming, based in Italy, evolved out of the madcap Luther Blissett phenomenon (see LiteratEye #15).

Blissett scattered into a million little pieces, becoming an incredible world-wide prank epidemic. For a time it seemed everyone was doing bizarre creative “actions” and attributing them to Blissett.

Then some members of the group that launched the Blissett project morphed into Wu Ming.

Apparently they are now four culturally revolutionary Italian novelists cranking out very popular books.

Being anonymous – the name means “no name” in Mandarin – they are only identified by number, Wu Ming1 through Wu Ming5.

Right. And we just said there are four of them. Well, one of them must have dropped out. Or something. Continue reading “LiteratEye #32: Pranks With a Novel Twist — An Interview with Elusive Wu Ming”

September 18, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #31: Poe”s Poems Were Hoaxers Focus

Here’s the thirty first 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 #31: Poe”s Poems Were Hoaxers Focus
By W.J. Elvin III
September 18, 2009

2h88h2v.pg-200 A master of macabre prose and poetry, Edgar Allan Poe”s greatest masterpiece was undoubtedly himself. Fate had its cruel influence, but to a great extent he authored his own construction and destruction.

You might ask: “Isn”t that true of all of us?” Probably so, to some degree.

But the little lies and exaggerations we construct about ourselves aren”t likely any match for the mystifications of a man whose life remains a weird puzzle despite study by hundreds of researchers and scholars.

Poe”s life and work have been very much in the spotlight this year. Events continue in his primary haunts – Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City – and throughout the nation and the world, in honor of his 200th birthday.

If you haven”t participated, there”s still time to take part in remembrances. Who knows what you might learn, about Poe or about yourself.

Poe walked in the psyche”s darkness as easily as most of us walk in broad daylight. And he brought back tales putting a name and words to what we find inexpressible. Or at least that was so in his day. Today the reader probably thinks, “Yep, saw that last week on Warehouse Thirteen.” (The spooky sci-fi series did in fact incorporate Poe into a recent episode).

But then again, he probably didn”t have anything therapeutic in mind. As portrayed by some students of his life and work, Poe may well have been a diabolical, disdainful and drug-addled trickster who delighted in tormenting his readers. Continue reading “LiteratEye #31: Poe”s Poems Were Hoaxers Focus”

September 14, 2009December 15, 2023

Newly Found Frida Kahlo Works Denounced

Forthcoming Frida Kahlo book denounced as fake
by Jason Edward Kaufman
The Art Newspaper
20 August 09

Art historians assert that “lost archive” of paintings, drawings and diaries are forged

web-frida.425 New York. A collection of Frida Kahlo oil paintings, diaries and archival material that is the subject of a book to be published by Princeton Architectural Press on 1 November has been denounced by scholars as a cache of fakes. Finding Frida Kahlo includes reproductions of paintings, drawings and handwritten letters, diaries, notes, trinkets and other ephemera attributed to the artist. They belong to Carlos Noyola and Leticia Fernà¡ndez, a couple who own the antique store La Buhardilla Antiquarios in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The publisher describes it as “an astonishing lost archive of one of the twentieth century’s most revered artists…full of ardent desires, seething fury, and outrageous humor”. Continue reading “Newly Found Frida Kahlo Works Denounced”

September 4, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #29: Kidnapped by Slavers! Abducted and Tortured by Wild Savages! Worse Yet, Branded a ‘Reckless Liar’!

Here’s the twenty ninth 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 #29: Kidnapped by Slavers! Abducted and Tortured by Wild Savages! Worse Yet, Branded a ‘Reckless Liar’!
By W.J. Elvin III
September 4, 2009

Indian Peter-200 Let’s say you had to choose, which would it be:

Abducted off the streets as a child, cast into the dingy hold of a sailing ship and, when it got filled with other unfortunates like yourself, carried off to a foreign land to be sold into slavery “¦ or “¦ captured by merciless wild Indians, witness to the brutal slaughter of numerous of your own people – men, women and children, and cruelly tortured for the mocking amusement of your captors?

Well, if you happen to be as lucky as Peter Williamson of Aberdeen, Scotland, back in the mid-1700s, you could have all that, plus a few other horrors and terrors for good measure.

Williamson, known later in life as “Indian Peter,” made the best of it. He wrote a book that sold well in his own day and remains an oft-quoted classic among tales of Indian captivity.

It’s quite the yarn, as some of the chapter headings indicate: Continue reading “LiteratEye #29: Kidnapped by Slavers! Abducted and Tortured by Wild Savages! Worse Yet, Branded a ‘Reckless Liar’!”