Telling Tales: A History of Literary Hoaxes – Melissa Katsoulis
Telling tales: A History of Literary Hoaxes reveals Melissa Katsoulis’s enjoyment of hoaxers, con artists and tricksters and their wayward, wicked schemes. She delights in their tricks, which are designed to puncture pomposity or to expose the self-regard of a particular artistic or literary scene. This is a genial history of forgeries, hoaxes and general skulduggery in the world of books.
When Dionysus the Renegade faked a Sophocles text in 400BC (cunningly inserting the arostic ‘Heraclides is ignorant letters’) to humiliate an academic rival, he paved the way for two millennia of increasingly outlandish literary hoaxers. The path from his mischievous stunt to more serious tricksters like the controversial memoirist and Oprah-duper James Frey, takes in every sort of writer: from the religious zealot to the bored student, via the vengeful academic and the out-and-out joker.
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
But whether hoaxing for fame, money, politics or simple amusement, each perpetrator represents something unique about why we write. Their stories speak volumes about how reading, writing and publishing have grown out of the fine and private places of the past into big business, TV-book-club-led-mass-marketplaces which, some would say, are ripe for the ripping. For the first time, the complete history of this fascinating sub-genre of world literature is revealed. Suitable for bookworms of all ages and persuasions, this is true crime for people who don’t like true crime, and literary history for the historically illiterate.
A treat to read right through or to dip into, it will make you think twice next time you slip between the covers of an author you don’t know…
Read this book? – Leave a comment or review below.
Related posts:
- 0 Comment
- Tags: 9781740668781, Forgeries, Literary Hoaxes, Melissa Katsoulis, Skulduggery, Telling Tales
What do you think? Join the discussion...
Additional comments powered by BackType
