Hoax Museum Blog: Literature/Language

The Voynich Manuscript Solved? — Computer Scientist Gordon Rugg may have proven that the mysterious Voynich Manuscript (the famously untranslatable medieval book full of pictures of naked women) is a hoax. He theorizes that it was created by a sixteenth-century Englishman named Edward Kelley in order to con Emperor Rudolph II. Kelley could have created the book by using an encryption device called a Cardan Grille. Voynich scholars are still undecided about Rugg's theory, but whether or not Rugg is right, it should now just be a matter of time before he lapses into insanity, as many other scholars who have spent too long obsessing about the Voynich Manuscript have done.

Literary Hoaxes — The Guardian, inspired by the recent publication of Peter Carey's My Life As a Fake, is offering a Short History of Literary Hoaxes. If you want a slightly longer history of literary hoaxes (as well as every other type of hoax) you could, um, buy my book.

My Life as a Fake — A review of Peter Carey's new book, My Life as a Fake, based on the story of Ern Malley, the Australian literary hoax.

Ern Malley Copyright — A legal battle erupts over who owns the copyright to the poems of Ern Malley. If you don't know who he is, Malley is Australia's most famous hoax poet. My favorite line of his continues to be, "I am still the black swan of trespass on alien waters." Brooding, eerie, and completely nonsensical. (I don't have anything about him on the website, but I've got a blurb about him in my book).

Ern Malley — The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Peter Carey is writing a novel about the Ern Malley hoax. It'll be titled My Life As A Fake. Ern Malley was the name of a poet who wowed Australia's Modernist literary establishment back in the 1940s. Trouble was, he was just a fictitious character invented as a prank by some anti-Modernists. Details here.

Plagiarism Plagiarized — An article in the magazine Syllabus is discovered to have been plagiarized. The topic of the article was plagiarism.

Henry Raddick, Amazon Reviewer — I recently spent some time reading the Amazon book reviews of Henry Raddick. If you're unfamiliar with this reviewer, you should definitely take the time to acquaint yourself with his work. Rumor has it that Raddick is actually a pseudonym for none other than Prince Charles, a rumor which the Prince vociferously denies. Last year Raddick, or whoever he really is, was involved in a more outright hoax: impersonating Andrew Lloyd Webber on Amazon. Unfortunately, all of Raddick's reviews as Webber have been yanked by Amazon, though the Register has managed to resurrect a few of them.

Streisand and Shakespeare — Barbara Streisand gets taken in by an internet e-mail hoax about Shakespeare.

Little Tree — The Independent remembers the "tall tale of Little Tree and the Cherokee who was really a Klansman." A puzzling literary hoax which raises the classic question which always hovers around literary and artistic hoaxes: does it matter if it's a hoax if people enjoy it?

Michael Gambino Pellegrino — The Sunday Telegraph writes about a recent, literary hoax: the case of Michael "Gambino" Pellegrino, a man who conned Simon and Schuster out of $500,000 by posing as a mafia mobster and selling them a story based on his life experience. It turned out that he was a crook, but was no mobster. (Requires Registration)

Remembering Naked Came the Stranger — Robert Wiemer, one of the 25 authors of the 'Naked Came the Stranger' literary hoax from 1969, died yesterday. He was better known as an editorial writer for Newsday.

Naked Came the Stranger was a novel that was designed to test just how low the standards of taste of the American public had sunk. 25 Newsday staff members each wrote a chapter of this novel. Their only requirements were that their chapters could contain no plot or character development, no social insight, and no verbal skill. Only one thing was required: a minimum of two sex scenes per chapter.

The resulting novel was attributed to a fictitious author (Penelope Ashe), who was played by the attractive sister-in-law of Mike McGrady, the columnist who conceived the idea for the hoax. McGrady's sister-in-law played her role to the fullest, appearing in interviews wearing low-cut dresses and bubbling about the joys of sexual liberation. The American public predictably ate it up and sales of the book soared. The Newsday writers eventually began to feel guilty about all the money they were receiving from the farce, and confessed. But the resulting publicity only made the book sell even better.

Ghostwriting — Great article in the National Post about the role of ghostwriters in the writing of "autobiographies." Often ghostwriters will invent the lives of their subjects out of whole cloth... And many celebrities never read the autobiographies which they've supposedly written. As the article says, "If the nominal author of a memoir says, 'I want to thank the devoted and talented Ms. Holly Ryle for her expert editorial assistance,' that probably means she wrote every word."

The Chinese Harry Potter — Apparently Chinese fans love the new Harry Potter novel: Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-To-Dragon. I can't wait for it to come out in English.

Imperial Misunderstanding — Be careful when you address the Imperial Highness in Japan. Amusing reference to possible verbal misunderstanding, from Japan Today.