The idea that a name on a title page doesn’t actually bear any relation to the author of a book is not exactly a new one. Recent revelations about a Syrian lesbian blogger who turned out to be a Scottish (married) man, Tom MacMaster, have prompted the former editor of Granta, Ian Jack, to reveal in the Guardian how he was almost duped by “Albania’s second greatest living writer”, Jiri Kajanë, in 1998. Stories sent in to the magazine by “Kajanë”, who had been published by journals in the United States, turned out to be written by his “translators”, two Americans whose day jobs, as an FBI investigator and psychological coach to a baseball team, the Dan Diego Padres, were apparently not exotic enough to furnish publishable material. Not very many people seem to have been taken in by the hoax, or to have noticed Kajanë, except when one of his stories was published in an anthology alongside better-known (and more verifiable) names. That was when a reviewer fatefully ranked him as second only to Ismail Kadare among living Albanian writers (is it possible that the list in the reviewer’s head was not very much longer than two -- or one, before he came across Kajanë?).
The two men behind the deception appear to have perpetrated it simply in order to have a better chance of being published. With the explosion of self-publishing online, that seems less of a concern. Indeed, Kajanë’s latest offering is an e-book. But a different sort of problem has emerged with the self-publishing arm of Amazon.com. It has begun to be overwhelmed with spam -- that is, with computer-generated material posing as genuine books. Reuters reports that enough of this material is bought by the unwitting to make it worth some spammer’s generating up to twenty “books” a day “without writing a word”. It’s enough to make one long for some form of “filtering” device, a sort of literary junk spotter, like a publisher, or a critic.
TLS, 24 Ιουνίου 2011The two men behind the deception appear to have perpetrated it simply in order to have a better chance of being published. With the explosion of self-publishing online, that seems less of a concern. Indeed, Kajanë’s latest offering is an e-book. But a different sort of problem has emerged with the self-publishing arm of Amazon.com. It has begun to be overwhelmed with spam -- that is, with computer-generated material posing as genuine books. Reuters reports that enough of this material is bought by the unwitting to make it worth some spammer’s generating up to twenty “books” a day “without writing a word”. It’s enough to make one long for some form of “filtering” device, a sort of literary junk spotter, like a publisher, or a critic.
Σχόλιο πρώτο. Καμιά εντύπωση δεν μου κάνει που ανθεί η μηχανική συγγραφή. Είναι η νομοτελειακή κατάληξη της λογικής της πάση θυσία γιγάντωσης των αριθμών και της αποθέωσης του ευπώλητου. Εδώ τόσα και τόσα σκουπίδια κυκλοφορούν βγαλμένα με καρμπόν που κατατάσσονται στη λογοτεχνία ενώ δεν είναι ούτε καν απλή καλλιέπεια (βλέπε Κώδικες Νταβίντσι), στις μηχανές θα κολλήσουμε; Άλλωστε από καιρό μας τέρπουν στο Διαδίκτυο οι μηχανικές μήτρες που γεννούν κείμενα με ύφος αντάξιο Κικής Δημουλά, ή ΚουΚουΕ, μέχρι και Δύτη των Νιπτήρων! (αδικία, αυτός είναι αμίμητος). Απλώς στις μέρες μας τα πάντα γίνονται με ταχύτητα άλλης τάξης μεγέθους. Είκοσι «βιβλία», λέει, βγάζουν την ημέρα οι σπαμερομηχανές· πού η καημένη η Μπάρμπαρα Κάρτλαντ που είχε καταφέρει να βγάζει δύο το μήνα...
Σχόλιο δεύτερο και αισιόδοξο. Ετοιμαστείτε για τα νέα επαγγέλματα: ανιχνευτής σκουπιδολογοτεχνίας κυβερνοχώρου!
