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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

A Million Little Pieces

Posted by John Holbo on 02/01/06 at 09:30 AM

I haven’t really followed the James Frey thing, but I get the idea. Publishing world convulsed by crisis of truthiness. I like this Patrick Nielsen Hayden post.

My personal latest nonsense reads have been Flashman books, by George Macdonald Fraser. From this wikipedia page I learn that "when first released in the United States, ten of 34 reviews published took [the first volume] to be a real, albeit obscure, memoir. Several of these were written by academics - to the delight of the New York Times, which published a selection of the more trusting reviews." But the first page clearly announces the protagonist is the caddish bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays. Isn’t it credible that fictional characters will stay fictional as they grow? "The half-scholarly tone has occasionally led to misunderstandings" doesn’t half explain how you could mistake an adventure novel for an authentic memoir - by the future writer of the screenplay for Octopussy, palpably practicing his chops. There is a complex irony, as the novels are about everyone believing things about Flashman, the craven poltroon, that are obviously false. He flees every major military engagement of the era - from Afghanistan to Little Big Horn - only to be showered in glory.

Reminds me of reports of folks taken in by Boilerplate, the Victorian era robot who fought beside Teddy Roosevelt’s Roughriders in Cuba. And joined an expedition to Antarctica. I like this: "Historians who fell for it presumably had no background in technology." Not much foreground either, I should imagine.

Comments

You can cite Boilerplate without mention of the recent little Chris Elliott plagiarism brouhaha?! What’s become of high irony anyway?

By nnyhav on 02/01/06 at 12:39 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I sort of feel sorry for Elliott, since apparently he thought it was an OLD hoax, which is at least a vaguely intelligible position. It’s interesting to me that it’s a copyright violation to give someone else’s fictional character a walk-on part; isn’t that an homage?

The Boilerplate graphic novel looks rather fun.

By John Holbo on 02/01/06 at 12:43 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Plus, there are all those suckers who believe in the bible.

By on 02/03/06 at 07:42 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Much as I enjoy the Flashman books, particularly the interplay between the faux-scholarly framework and the main narrative, there’s always a lingering sense, supported by Fraser’s non-fiction, that some of Flashman’s more outrageously racist statements aren’t entirely a million miles away from the author’s personal opinions.

By on 02/08/06 at 07:05 AM | Permanent link to this comment

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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

A Million Little Pieces

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