Don wrote:
"I was trying to find his email address to ask him about
where one might look for some of the guy's books, but now I
want to find out for sure if it's a hoax or not; if so, it's
extremely well done."
A character in O'Connell's Box Nine frequented a mystery
bookstore. He and the guy who owned the store had different
taste in mysteries. One liked traditional mysteries, the
other hardboiled, however, neither knew what to make of "Deco
Noir," a new genre out of France that was basically a series
of random acts of violence. Although I was pretty sure that
this was a literary in-joke about postmodernism (especially
considering the way O'Connell plays with lingistics and
structuralism in that book), I started searching for them. I
thought that if they didn't exist, they should. I picked up
some later Robbe-Grillet, read a book called Cherokee, etc.
(I forget the author). Manchette had not yet been translated;
I could see him writing something like that. I even asked
about the alleged genre on this list once a long time
ago.
Later, O'Connell surprised me with an email thanking me for
some comments I had made here praising his work. I figured
this was my chance and asked him about Deco Noir. Alas, he
confirmed it was a joke. Of course, this is not nearly the
same scale as inventing an author, along with bibliography,
but proof that O'Connell will perpetrate literary
invention.
Mark
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