I love this.
Thanks to the Da Vinci Code, I've got secret codes on the brain. This story has one of the greatest silly codes ever, and some egotistical egghead fell for it.
I love, love, love the fact that petty, cut-throat, vindictive literary rivalry is alive and well.
"LONDON — A biographer of English poet John Betjeman has confessed to writing a hoax love letter that duped a rival author, a British newspaper reported Sunday.
The Sunday Times said Bevis Hiller admitted sending the fake letter to A.N. Wilson — complete with a coded four-letter insult aimed at Wilson.
“It's a fair cop,” the newspaper quoted Hillier saying when confronted about the letter.
Wilson thought the passionate letter — ostensibly written by Betjeman to a Second World War colleague, Honor Tracy — was evidence of a previously unknown extramarital affair and included it in his recently published book Betjeman.
Wilson acknowledged the letter must be fake last week, after the Sunday Times pointed out the first letter of each sentence spelled out “A.N. Wilson is a shit.”
The newspaper quoted Hillier saying the hoax was prompted by annoyance at the attention received by Wilson's book, published after his own three-volume biography of the poet."
I'm trying to remember if it is in a novel by Martin Amis or Julian Barnes (speaking of rivals!!) that something similar happens.
3 comments:
well there is that bit in THE INFORMATION where the main character has to have the humiliation of reading to empty rooms while his hated rival has crowds of people waiting to sign books etc
That's the one. Thanks. There's a lot of writerly nastiness in that book. I must pull it out and read it again.
and writerly jealousy
lots and lots
oh boy
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