Son of Table-Talk of P.G. for June 12, 2008

Beantown and environs: I'll be reading tonight at Newtonville Books, 7 p.m.!

(Thanks to all who came out last night for the Happy Ending reading!)

Next week: West Coast!
Week after that: BROOKLYN!
More info: here.

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L.G. Thomas directs us to the University of Delaware's Library of Literary Forgery, featuring, among others, Frederick Prokosch and George Psalmanazar:

Born in the South of France, sometime between 1679 and 1684, Psalmanazar never revealed his birth name and allegedly adopted his pseudonym from the Old Testament figure Shalmaneser, King of Assyria. He traveled to Germany, took on the persona of an uncivilized Japanese--who spoke fluent Latin--and joined a regiment in the service of the Dutch. Psalmanazar recounted colorful stories of his past life to his fellow soldiers and when his regiment was posted to Sluys, in the Southwest region of the Netherlands, Psalmanazar came to the attention of the Rev. Alexander Innes, who served as chaplain to a Scottish regiment. Intrigued by Psalmanazar's wild claims, Innes soon discovered Psalmanazar's fraud--purportedly by asking him to translate a passage from Cicero into Japanese. Once he discovered the fraud, however, Innes became Psalamanazar's confederate, seeing in him a means to better his own fortune....

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Line of the week: "My new house is an unintentional Gordon Matta-Clark project." —Selfdivider