Jan 16, 200610:52 AMThe Life

Who doesn't love a good scandale littéraire?!

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Jan 16, 2006 - 10:52 AM
Q: What do these "authors" have in common: James Frey, JT Leroy, Thomas Chatterton, James Macpherson, Ern Malley, Clifford Irving, Forrest Carter, Beatrice Sparks, Gerd Heidemann, Crad Kilodney, Anthony Godby Johnson, Andreas Karavis, Lynne Cheney and Scooter Libby?

A: Most of them are enshrined in Writing Wrongs - a history of literary hoaxes at the CBC:

Writers with a hard-luck memoir in the works may want to wait until the dust settles before approaching a publisher. With both of these swindles [James Frey and JT Leroy], industry insiders have spent the week alternately claiming they "suspected all along" that something was up and nervously defending their fact-checking processes. As for the rest of us, we can sit back and relish the juicy details of the latest incidents in the long, illustrious history of literary hoaxes.
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Okay, okay - I threw in Scooter and Lynne just to see if you were paying attention. ;-)

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