LiteratEye - The Art of the Prank

October 9, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #34: Between the Covers: What”s It Like to Be in a Book?

Here’s the thirty 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 #34: Between the Covers: What”s It Like to Be in a Book?
By W.J. Elvin III
October 9, 2009

FOUR-190 Once upon a time it was something of a rarity to appear personally in print, or even to know someone who”d been written about.

Today, it”s routine to be mentioned in someone”s blog, or, failing that, to spend five minutes launching a blog and filling it with “me, me, me.”

But it”s still a bit extraordinary to be in a book unless one has achieved celebrity or notoriety. When it happens to ordinary folk, the experience may come as a welcome surprise or a humiliating shock.

Certainly a book could be written covering all the lawsuits that have resulted from unwelcome attention of that sort.https://artoftheprank.com/blog/wp-admin/index.php?page=stats

For me, a career in the news business has meant frequently writing about others and rarely being written about myself.

I was, for many years, a Washington “insider” columnist and feature writer.

I”ve often run across books mentioning intrigues, scandals and skullduggery that I”d unearthed or expanded upon.

But that”s not the same as actually being named and perhaps profiled. Continue reading “LiteratEye #34: Between the Covers: What”s It Like to Be in a Book?”

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 11, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #30: Can Holden Caulfield Come Out and Play? You”ll Have to Ask the Judge

Here’s the thirtieth 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 #30: Can Holden Caulfield Come Out and Play? You”ll Have to Ask the Judge
By W.J. Elvin III
September 4, 2009

salingercatcher-200 J.D. Salinger has been hiding out in the woods for the past fifty years or so, rarely heard from except when disputes have drawn him into legal battles. As has been widely reported, one such battle is going on right now, that being his suit against Fredrik Colting, a Swedish author.

There”s no need to trouble you with a lot of detail since it”s been in the news. The problem is Colting”s new book, 60 Years Later.

You have to go to Amazon UK to have a look at the “sequel” to Salinger”s Catcher in the Rye, since the courts have thus far blocked publication in the U.S..

Salinger”s reclusive nature has sparked considerable media curiosity over the years. What”s up with that guy? Most likely Salinger, now 90, simply had enough of life in the hustling, bustling outside world in his youth. Some of us, so it seems, just aren”t wired for playing hardball in the fast lane. Continue reading “LiteratEye #30: Can Holden Caulfield Come Out and Play? You”ll Have to Ask the Judge”

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’!”