In honor of April Fools’ Day, I was going to write about (in)famous literary hoaxes: historic incidents of made-up memoirs when an author manages to trick the entire reading public.

There are already a number of Top Ten Lists of these kinds of hoaxes, including one from the Guardian and another from ABC News. They include a handful of Holocaust memoirs and James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces.”

But then I started to think more about it.  What is a hoax, anyways, when dealing with literature?  Why do people allow themselves to feel betrayed by an author?  I’m going to hesitantly posit an idea:  The whole concept of a literary hoax is a dying one because of the advent of postmodern literature.

Okay, bear with me here. Read more »

7 contemporary writers answer the question: is Leo Tolstoy the greatest writer of all time?

The Millions breaks down fiction released by The New Yorker in 2009.

Poeteevee is a new online poetry video series, via HTMLGIANT.

Selections from the Twitter stream of personal ads from the London Review of Books.

Well, it’s official: watching TV will make you die.

James Frey’s six-word memoir: “So would you believe me anyway?” Heh. Via The Book Bench.

The pickup artist poem, via Ron Silliman.

How many have you slept with? Uh, books, I mean.

Aaaand because it’s Wedneday, a video called “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Murder,” in which a hitchhiker (true to statistics, a murderer) meets his driver (also true to statistics, a murderer). Excellent. Read more »

Lawrence Tarpey's "Pinocchio"

An old boyfriend once told me that I was the worst liar he ever knew.  He told me he could hear that distinct quiver in my voice and see the slight shift in my eyes every time I told a lie.  What he sadly never learned in our short-lived relationship was that these were calculated moments concocted to conceal my true dishonest self.  I had lulled him into believing I was a terrible liar in order to conceal the fact that I was actually great at it.

Before you go analyzing the verity of every past conversation you have ever had with me, please know that I’m given more crap for being too honest than lying too often.  I am that person in your life that tells you your latest script bored me to death and that your new girlfriend’s voice is the source of my migraines.  Though I choose not to engage it in often, lying is a necessary part of life.  Imagine if I had been completely honest with my old boyfriend? Or if he had been completely honest with me? The upside is that we probably would have wasted less time together but we also would have left the relationship with less of our dignity intact.  But forget all that – Lit Drift isn’t a dating column (at least not until Cosmo starts linking our articles) – I’m here today to hopefully find the correlation between great liars and great writers.  Read more »