Literary Hoaxes

[Dave U. Random]

(HuntingtonNews.net) - As the recent Colorado "Balloon Boy"
staged-for-media event demonstrates, there must be a hoax
gene lurking in many people, awaiting only the proper time
to be unleashed.

Melissa Katsoulis provides a very good sampling of hoaxes
by writers in her "Literary Hoaxes: An Eye-Opening History
of Famous Frauds" (Amazon.com: http://xrl.us/LiteraryHoaxes
).

James Frey scammed a major publisher, Random House, and
Oprah Winfrey in his faux addiction memoir "A Million
Little Pieces" published in 2003 and exposed as a fake in
late 2005 and early 2006; and a white "Valley Girl" using
the nom de plume Margaret B. Jones (real name Margaret
Seltzer) pretended to be a half Native-American, half-white
gang follower in her faux memoir "Love and Consequences."
Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin, published her story of
growing up the foster child of black parents in South-
Central Los Angeles, and Oprah featured "Jones" on her
show. One wonders about the fact-checking, vetting process
of Oprah's show, as well as fact-checking at major
publishers. Katsoulis says the vetting procedures have been
tightened in the wake of the Frey and "Jones" episodes,
both of which are examined in detail in this book. I wonder
if they have been, since new fakes keep cropping up..

Continued: http://xrl.us/LiteraryHoaxesReview

[Jack Campin - bogus address]

A shortened link that could lead to anything, in a message
posted from an anonymizer.

No thanks.

==== j a c k at c a m p i n . m e . u k === <http://www.campin.me.uk> ====
Jack Campin, 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland == mob 07800 739 557
CD-ROMs and free stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, and Mac logic fonts
****** I killfile Google posts - email me if you want to be whitelisted ******

[Jay]

On Oct 28, 3:21 pm, Jack Campin - bogus address
<bo...@purr.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> A shortened link that could lead to anything, in a message
> posted from an anonymizer.
>
> No thanks.

The original poster's link is a shortened domain (as pointed
out above) and redirects to Amazon.com's page for the book.
In other words, the original post is a literary hoax.

My guess is that either the author or someone acting for the
author is plugging her book. She could use this incident as
an anecdote in interviews concerning her book.

Whoever thinks Americans are anemic in irony
(punny, no?) ought to be chuckling.