April Fool’s Day is a day to celebrate the joy that can be had in a good natured hoax or prank. Sure, some might call these acts an elaborate lie, but when done for a harmless laugh, a prank can be a sort of living art form ushering unsuspecting people into playing a brief role of impromptu theater. When reading a novel, we know it is fiction yet half the joy is in immersing ourselves into the imaginary worlds and stories of the novel. Some authors have used this as an opportunity to have fun with readers or create their own little hoaxes with their novels so, in the spirit of April Fools Day, let’s take a look at some of the great literary tricksters.
Fernando Pessoa
At the start of the 20th century there were three prominent poets publishing in Portugal: Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis. Each had a distinct style and often interacted with each other in the press. The catch is they were all the same person: Fernando Pessoa. One of the greatest literary figures of the 20th century, Pessoa wrote and published under at least 75 different names, including his own, creating what he called “heteronyms” as opposed to pseudonyms to emphasize that each was a character with unique personalities and opinions. They would frequently write articles criticizing each other, translating each other, reviewing each other, and more. Some of these heteronyms were not discovered to be him until after his death. He is best known for the book The Book of Disquiet, published posthumously from unedited manuscripts he left behind and credited to Bernardo Soares, another of his heteronyms.
William Goldman
I have more than once run across a person who is always hoping to find an unabridged copy of S. Morgenstern's The Princess Bride. Unfortunately, this does not exist. Published in 1973, The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version purports to merely be “adapted” by William Goldman, a rather clever and fun framing he leans into with an introduction about how he came to have heard Morgenstern’s novel but only “the good parts.” He claims he spent years tracking down the full story but found it much too boring and was publishing only the fun bits and provides commentary throughout the book. The much beloved and whimsical film adaptation cleverly spoofs this by having the film be the abridgement of a grandfather reading to his grandson and the two provide commentary throughout the film.
Nikolai Gogol
Framing a story as a tale told to the author to add a layer of intrigue and plausibility that nudges the tradition of oral storytelling was a common technique in classic Eastern European books. In the introduction to his story Viy, Ukrainian author Nikolai Gogol explains how the character Viy was constructed from old folktales about the creature. The popularity of the story, first published in 1835, led to the creature Viy being a popular feature in Slavic folktales and thought to have a rich history behind it. Scholars, however, have yet to find any evidence that the creature Viy existed before Gogol’s tale and concluded his introduction was in jest. Viy, however, continues to be regarded as a classic figure in Slavic folklore.
Edgar Allan Poe
Known for his eerie stories and creepy poems of ravens and dead lovers, Edgar Alan Poe once published an elaborate hoax in the newspaper. In 1844, Poe wrote an article for The New York Sun claiming to describe the first trans-Atlantic balloon-crossing piloted by explorer Monck Mason (who was a nod to real-life balloonist Thomas Monck Mason). After the truth was revealed, it was suspected that Poe’s story was a response to the Great Moon Hoax published in the same paper years earlier that claimed an astronomer was able to watch winged beasts living on the moon with a secret new telescope. Poe had claimed the hoax was an uncredited rewrite of his short story The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall. Poe’s hoax is lesser know, but it was a major inspiration for Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days.
Umberto Eco
Eco’s most famous novel, The Name of the Rose, was initially attributed to Adso of Melk with Eco appearing on the cover as the translator. In his introduction, Eco tells of how he supposedly translated a book given to him in 1968 by someone named Abbé Vallet, which was a French translation dated 1842 of a Latin text written by an aging monk, Adso of Melk, in 14th-century Italy. The novel, however, was not a true historical document but merely a story invented by Eco and he eventually confessed to the joke. Many of the characters were noticeably based on real figures who lived after the time of the fictional Adso, such as the character Jorge de Burgos who is a reference to real life author, Jorge Luis Borges. Also, the secret, labyrinthian library in The Name of the Rose is based on Borge’s story The Library of Babel.
Jorge Luis Borges
Borges himself is another of our great literary tricksters. The Argentinian short-story writer, translator, poet, and essayist who continued to be director of the Argentine National Library even after he went blind is considered one of the most influential figures in Spanish-language literature and a major influence on the genre of magical realism. Borges’ short stories are often written in the form of an essays, as a critical analysis on an author’s works, or as a review of newly discovered texts. The catch, however, is that the authors and novels that he analyzes are completely fictional, making for a rather fun and satirical way to look at literary criticism or imaginative way to tell about a mysterious text full of magic or invented folklore. He writes of infinite libraries or books with infinite pages, mirrors that show other dimensions, discovered manuscripts from Judas Iscariot, journals about adventures of stumbling into mythical lands, and more. Borges joked that he included passages written by himself into novels that he translated, and though this has never been confirmed it is certainly plausible considering his ability to fluidly alter his writing voice.
Yáng Shuāng-zǐ
Taiwan Travelogue, which was the winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Fiction for the English translation by Lin King is a fascinating and nested hoax of translation and fictional history. When the novel was first published in Mandarin in 2020, Yáng Shuāng-zǐ appeared on the cover merely as the translator of a a robust and modern retranslation forged from archival documents and earlier translations of a rediscovered 1954 Japanese novel by Aoyama Chizuko. Scholars were confused–how had such an important autobiographical novel about Japanese colonialism just before World War II slipped through the cracks, and why did something seem a bit off about the validity of it? Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, who was already well known for queer romance novels, quickly confessed to the mystery, though less over the confusion about it being a fake “found” text and more for personal matters. Because Yáng Shuāng-zǐ is also not the author’s real name, but a shared pseudonym between Yáng Ruoci (the author) and her sister Yáng Ruohui who passed away just before Yáng Ruoci began writing the novel. Questions regarding if Yáng Ruohui was involved in the translation began to bother the author’s family and they didn’t want it to cause problems. Scholars were upset, however, and demanded the publisher recall the first printing and re-issue the book with Yáng Shuāng-zǐ credited as the author to not mislead people. Zhuang Ruilin, the editor-in-chief of Spring Mountain Publishing House who published the novel defended the hoax saying that “it is a great irony” to take a fictional work and make a “moral question of whether it is deceptive or not.” They still followed through with correcting the authorial attributions on the second printing.
If this wasn’t already a matryoshka doll of metafiction, the novel itself is written as if it was a retranslation and includes footnotes from both Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and the fictional, original translator (whose identity is an important reveal in the novel itself). Lin King’s English translation adds a further step, adding another layer of footnotes as well as her own afterword to accompany the multiple afterwords from the fictional translators as well as the original translator’s daughter. King also discusses how there was another layer in her role as translator, communicating with the Japanese translator of Taiwan Travelogue, Miura Yuko, to check her Japanese transliterations of names and places. King writes:
"A Taiwanese translator, while bringing the book to the ultimate colonial language of English, has struggled to determine how the Japanese colonial government would have pronounced Taiwanese terms and therefore consulted the Japanese translation of a Taiwanese novel that claims to be a Taiwanese translation of a Japanese novel."
This pretty succinctly sums up the linguistic playfulness of the novel which uses the act of translation as a commentary on colonialism itself. Sometimes a hoax or fiction can reveal a lot about reality.
Catherine Lacey
"People try to escape their past through characters," writes Charlotte Marie (C.M.) Lucca, biographer and widow of the great female artist/songwriter/novelist known only as X who possessively hid her childhood history. Except X is a character herself, and so is Lucca and despite the title page claiming it as a biography published in 2005, it is actually the 2023 novel Biography of X by literary chameleon Catherine Lacey. The “biography” is an extraordinary romp through the art world, cults, and more where the inclusion of many real people and events helps mask the fictional characters and events commingling with them. Lacey originally intended to write a biography of a living person but, after being encouraged to abandon the idea by one of her teachers, switched to writing a fictional biography instead. While the novel was originally sent to print without Lacey’s name on the cover or title page, confusion in pre-reviews led the publisher to confess to the joke, add Lacey to the front cover but keep the inside title page showing the book as a biography by C.M. Lucca. Biography of X would be chosen by The Atlantic as one of the best novels of the past century.
William Henry Ireland
A young William Henry Ireland was fond of Shakespeare and published several forgeries, such as fake letters from the Bard and even produced an entire fake play. He claimed that at the age of 19 he had uncovered an unknown play written by Shakespeare, Vortigern and Rowena, and had it premiere in 1796 at London’s Drury Lane Theatre. Despite being notably full of common Shakespeare tropes, critics immediately suspected fraud and denounced the play as a poorly done hoax. Scholars had previously authenticated Ireland’s forged Shakespeare letters but, in light of the obviously fake play, revisited them and denounced their authenticity. It was also revealed that William Ireland had practiced forging signatures while working in his father’s bank, which destroyed the elder Samuel Ireland’s reputation. He died a few years later in shame. Disgraced, Ireland didn’t fully confess to the fraud until 1805. His reputation in tatters, he moved to France in 1814 and worked at the French National Library. He frequently spent time in debtors' prison and though he died in poverty he did not die in obscurity as there was a rather positive public reception to his later Gothic novels.
Nora Roberts
Beloved romance author Nora Roberts has long written under the pseudonym J.D. Robb for her series of police procedural and thriller novels. So it was with great humor when the two began to "co-write" novels together, published with both authors named written on the cover.
There have been many great hoaxes and pranks in the art world and these literary tricksters sure knew how to have fun with fiction and their readers. You can find their books and more here at Herrick District Library.
In the spirit of April Fool's Day, check out these literary tricksters who pulled off some great hoaxes and pranks with their stories. herrickdl adultpicks
