Dept. of Words of one syllable

Flat prose of the month goes to this headline in the Iowa City Press-Citizen:

Man uncovers possible hoax
Book not what it seems to be

I am on the edge of my fucking seat after reading that headline.

The story (courtesy GalleyCat) concerns an allegedly non-fiction book entitled "An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin" which is described as being about "the funerary violin and the Great Funerary Purges that almost wiped it out." An Iowa City bookstore employee is being credited with skepticism over the existence of anything called a funerary violin. Apparently someone concocted an elaborate website defending the book and saying there is too such a thing, but the website itself is also a hoax.

This fails to excite me on the level of the Frey and LeRoy hoaxes. Could it be that the book's publisher, Overlook Press, simply mistakenly classified a novel as non-fiction?

In other exciting news:

Although San Jose has gargantuan potential for blossoming into a serious world-class city, the majority of its citizens couldn't care less.

That's from San Jose's own alt.weekly. Pretty bad when you have to harsh your own town like that: "a suburban wasteland forever in search of a city." Sounds like someone needs to get laid.

funerary violin, literary hoaxes, Iowa City, San Jose, Gary Singh