Reality Bug Bites
Hilarious NYT piece by novelist/screenwriter Mark Leyner, author of My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist, on the Margaret "Jones" scam:
IN a scandal that’s sending shock waves through both the publishing industry and academia, the author Franz Kafka has been revealed to be a fraud.“‘The Metamorphosis’ — purported to be the fictional account of a man who turns into a large cockroach — is actually non-fiction,” according to a statement released by Mr. Kafka’s editor, who spoke only on the condition that he be identified as E.
“The story is true. Kafka simply wrote a completely verifiable, journalistic account of a neighbor by the name of Gregor Samsa who, because of some bizarre medical condition, turned into a ‘monstrous vermin.’ Kafka assured us that he’d made the whole thing up. We now know that to be completely false. The account is 100 percent true.”
In the wake of recent revelations concerning Margaret B. Jones’s memoir “Love and Consequences” and Misha Defonseca’s “Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years,” the disclosure that Mr. Kafka’s work was based on reality has embarrassed editors and scholars.
“I’ve been teaching ‘The Metamorphosis’ for years, said a professor of literature at Princeton, who insisted that he be identified as P. “I’ve called it one of the most sublime pieces of literature ever written. Elias Canetti called it ‘one of the few great and perfect poetic works written during this century.’ To find out that it’s actually true is devastating.”
The actual condition of Kafka’s neighbor, a Prague salesman who didn’t return our calls or e-mail messages requesting comment, is known as entomological dysplasia, and is somewhat rare. It results in the development over time of a hard carapace, a segmented body and antennas.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Kafka was contrite and tearful. “I know what I did was wrong,” he said. “I’m very alienated from myself, but that’s no excuse to lie. I took someone’s life and selfishly turned it into an enigmatic literary parable.”
Posted by aalkon at March 10, 2008 3:50 AM
Comments
Leyner's brilliant. 10 years ago, while skimming a passage of "Tetherballs of Bougainville" at the Barnes & Noble at the Promenade, I laughed until I wept. They threatened to have me arrested if I didn't pull it together.
Diggression! Diggression! I know this isn't what the blog is for, but our darling slut Google identifies that very passage, a remembrance of carefree teenage days:
I think that we tend to select certain emblematic images to store in our memories as visual icons representing each of the journeys and sojourns in our lives. And when I remember our year in St.-Leonard-de-Noblat, I think of the topless contessa and her boom box.Every sunny afternoon I'd go down to the lake and watch the contessa, a voluptuous woman from one of the most severely lead-poisoned families, struggle for 45 minutes to mount her chaise longue and then endeavor spastically for another half hour to remove her bikini top. This finally accomplished, she'd pillow an ear against her huge radio, which was turned up so loud that it literally drowned out the dredging equipment that the sanitation department used to remove bodies from the turbid water.
There I'd loiter, leering, until I'd hear my mother's calls--her voice so shrill that it easily pierced the roar of the dredging equipment and the blare of the bare-breasted contessa's ghetto blaster. I'd reluctantly trudge home to find Mom on the veranda, draining her second pitcher of kamikazes.
"Get your steno pad," she'd bark, lighting a cigarette and singeing the ends of a platinum tress that had swung into the flame of her Zippo.
And so each afternoon my mother would dictate yet another revision of her "living will." And although all sorts of frivolous codicils were continuously appended--often to be nullified the following day--the gist of the will remained constant: "In the event that I ever become seriously ill and my ability to communicate is impaired, please honor the following requests. No matter how onerous a financial and emotional burden I become to my family and no matter what extraordinary means are necessary, I want to be kept going. I don't care about mental lucidity, dignity, or quality of life, I don't care how flat my EEG is or for how long, I don't care if I'm just half a lung and a few feet of bowel--I want to be kept alive."
"Do you understand?" she'd snarl.
"Yes, Mom," I'd nod.
I'd file the latest version in a strongbox in her lingerie drawer, and then scamper back to the lake, hoping that I'd hadn't missed the departure of the contessa, a sad and beautiful spectacle. Her lead-suffused flesh luridly burnished in the gloaming, she'd attempt to free herself from her folding chaise, which would have collapsed around her like a Venus' flytrap enclasping some engorged and lustrous bug.
It's a great book. Also, Leyner's "Et Tu, Babe.
Posted by: Crid at March 10, 2008 2:45 AM
All but the last line is Leyners (damn html tags....)
Posted by: Crid at March 10, 2008 3:04 AM
Fixed. For some reason, ital only works on one para. Turned it into a blockquote. And yes, Leyner is brilliant.
Posted by: Amy Alkon 
at March 10, 2008 5:38 AM
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