Inspired by the excruciating ruminations of Lisa Chellman, I finally started a list I’ve been meaning to make for a long time. I think you’ll quickly discern the theme:

Audubon’s Elephant, by Duff Hart-Davis (2004)
Caesar’s Column, by Ignatius Donnelly and Walter Rideout (1960)
Cleopatra’s Nose, by Daniel J. Boorstin (1994)
Cleopatra’s Nose, by Judith Thurman (2007)
Corelli’s Mandolin, by Louis De Bernieres (1994)
D’Alembert’s Principle, by Andrew Crumey (1998)
Darconville’s Cat, by Alexander Theroux’s (1981)
Darwin’s Wink, by Alison Anderson (2004)
Descartes’ Error, by Antonio Damaso (1994) 
Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes (1984)
Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco (1989)
Galileo’s Daughter, by Dava Sobel (1999)
Galileo’s Finger, by Peter Atkins (2003)
Galileo’s Mistake, by Wade Rowland (2003)
Galileo’s Pendulum, by Roger G. Newton (2004)
Galileo’s Treasure Box, by Catherine Brighton (1987)
Kafka’s Prayer, by Paul Goodman (1947)
Prospero’s Daughter, by Elizabeth Nunez (2006)
Prospero’s Daughters, by Sally Stewart (2006)
Pushkin’s Button, by Serena Vitale (1999)
Rembrandt’s Eyes, by Simon Schama (1999)
Rembrandt’s Nose, by Michael Taylor (2007)
Schopenhauer’s Porcupines, by Deborah Anna Luepnitz (2002)
Schopenhauer’s Telescope, by Gerard Donovan (2003)
Stalin’s Nose, by Rory MacLean (1993)
Wittgenstein’s Poker, by David Edmonds and John Eidinow (2001)

There is, of course, an impressive Shakespearean subset:

Shakespeare’s Counselor, by Charlaine Harris (2001)
Shakespeare’s Daughter, by Peter W. Hassinger (2004)
Shakespeare’s Kitchen, by Lore Segal (2007)
Shakespeare’s Scribe, by Gary Blackwood (2000)
Shakespeare’s Spy, by Gary Blackwood (2003)

The question is, are there enough of these to create an A-Z? And should the rules restrict qualification to actual historical figures, or can we include titles like Alexander Theroux’s Darconville’s Cat (1981)?

These are just off the top of my head–there must be many more. Help me out!

Update #1: Bill Ott pointed me to his February 15, 2004 Back Page (”Working Titles“), which includes some good ones, especially a bunch of Galileos. Also, amazingly, his forthcoming column, in the May 15 issue, debunks the notion that we ever considered changing the name Booklist to Galileo’s Reviews.

Update #2: Donna Seaman offered a sweet-smelling quartet of books with “nose” in the title, including two Cleopatras.

Update #3: Sue-Ellen Beauregard suggested Prospero’s Daughter, and when I searched it, I found that Prospero had not one but two.

Update #4: More, more, more . . . good tips from Mary Ellen Quinn (Corelli), Ray Olson (Caesar, D’Alembert, Kafka), and Donna (Descartes).

If you missed Terry Gross’ ”Fresh Air” interview of the always-fascinating Charles Ardai yesterday, you can check it out online. Although much of the information about the Hard Case Crime publisher was familiar to me from my own interview three years ago (I’m proud to say that Booklist recognized HCC’s potential appeal long before the mainstream media caught on), two things were new to me. One was that both of Ardai’s parents were Holocaust survivors, a fact that obviously had a huge influence on his life. And the other was that his forthcoming novel, Fifty-to-One, is a humorous tale about a character named “Charles” who happens to be the editor of a publishing concern called “Hard Case Crime.”

Metafiction: the hot new trend in crime fiction!

From the Department of Silver Linings: according to the Independent, Salman Rushdie (The Enchantress of Florence, 2008) told a TV shrink* that a death threat improved his outlook on life (”Rushdie: how the fatwa made me a much nicer man,” by Jonathan Owen):

Sir Salman Rushdie has confessed how he emerged a better person after being under a fatwa that saw him live a life in virtual seclusion for almost a decade.

In 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued the author with a death warrant over alleged blasphemy against the Prophet Mohamed in his novel The Satanic Verses. In a revelatory encounter with clinical psychologist Pamela Connolly, to be shown on Channel 4 later this month, the author claims the decision ultimately helped him become more self-aware.

What was it that Churchill said about a “blessing in disguise”? That it’s “very effectively disguised”? Do I have that right?

*Before you tell me that term is out of fashion, let me just say that the show is called Shrink Rap.

For someone who seems a little media-shy, I’m not sure that blogging is the next best move for James Frey. The feedback tends to be, shall we say, forthright and immediate. Then again, there’s nothing quite so sincere as blogging on Amazon when you’ve got a book coming out.

All right, this will be my last fraud-related post of the week. Probably. On Media Assassin, Harry Allen has video of Margaret Seltzer, aka Margaret B. Jones (Love and Consequences, 2008), explaining what her upbringing was like:

“We used to say, growing up, ‘I’m not from America, I’m from South Central L.A.’”

Ouch!

(Via.)

As previously noted, James Frey is coming back. In his first interview since his second Oprah appearance, he rehashes the whole affair with Vanity Fair’s Evgenia Peretz (”James Frey’s Morning After“). As much as I’ve always believed that it doesn’t matter whether writers are personally likeable–great art has often been created by jerks, and vice versa–well, he comes off as pretty hard to like.

I also thought, however, as I have with other fraudsters, that I can kind of see how the whole making-things-up business could slip out of control. When you’re desperate to get published, it’s probably easy to see agents, publishers, publicists, etc. as experts whose wisdom should be obeyed. And if you’ve never been in the public eye, it’s probably hard to imagine how a few fabrications will come back to haunt you.

That said, Frey still has to take responsibility for what happened. I’m not one to suggest that memoirs should be fact-checked as a rule, but when authors claim pasts for themselves that carry a certain moral weight–say, as ex-convicts, gang members, holocaust survivors–then the publishers should verify their claims. A memoir of a life in publishing doesn’t necessarily require the same treatment.

Remember, the easiest solution is still to publish them as fiction. Or humor. Or at least with a suitably broad, large-print disclaimer.

Peretz’s piece does a nice job of tracking Frey’s own attitude toward and claims about his book’s veracity. But the guy with the “ftbsitttd” tattoo still seems unrepentant:

“The enduring myth of the American memoir as a precise form is bullshit and needed to go away,” he says. “Although the experience was a nightmare, if I started the process of ending that myth, I’m perfectly fine with it. I’ve said all along that I never wanted my books published as memoirs.”

If he never wanted his books to be published as memoirs, why does he care about the memoir form? I guess he developed an interest along the way.

He may be coming back, but he won’t, apparently, be coming back to Chicago.

The winners of the Edgar Allan Poe Awards have been announced.

Best Novel

Down River, by John Hart (St. Martin’s Minotaur)

Best First Novel By An American Author

In the Woods, by Tana French (Viking)

Best Paperback Original

Queenpin, by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)

Best Critical/Biographical

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (Penguin)

Best Fact Crime

Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, by Vincent Bugliosi (Norton)

Best Short Story

“The Golden Gopher,” Los Angeles Noir, by Susan Straight (Akashic)

Best Young Adult

Rat Life, by Tedd Arnold (Dial/Sleuth)

Best Juvenile

The Night Tourist, by Katherine Marsh (Hyperion)

Best Play

Panic, by Joseph Goodrich (International Mystery Writers’ Festival)

Best Television Episode Teleplay

“Pilot,” Burn Notice, by Matt Nix (USA Network/Fox Television Studios)

Best Motion Picture Screen Play

Michael Clayton, by Tony Gilroy (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Robert L. Fish Memorial Award

“The Catch,” from Still Waters, by Mark Ammons (Level Best)

The literary news is just so entertaining lately. For instance, confidence men have been targeting bookstores, posing as published authors. Yes, you read that right. In the L.A. Times (”Hoaxes hit bookstores“), Scott Timberg reports that bookstore workers have received calls from people pretending to be Mark Sarvas (Harry Revised, 2008), Eric Gower (The Breakaway Cook), Nick Hornby (Slam, 2007), Ray Bradbury (Now and Forever, 2007), and Russell Banks (The Reserve, 2007)–most of them claiming that something bad had happened to them and that they needed money wired to them right away.

Authors are often short of money, but really.

And Mark Sarvas? No offense to the always interesting Elegant Variation blogger, but he doesn’t seem like enough of a “name” to serve as the lynchpin for a con. Although I guess you might assume he needs money more than Ray Bradbury does. And Skylight Books manager Karen Slattery seems to like him:

“There is this sense that bookstores have this special relationship with authors, that they help them out. And if it had really been Mark Sarvas I definitely would have done it.”

You’ve gotta love Jonathan Franzen (The Discomfort Zone, 2006). At least he doesn’t pick fights with small-timers. The New York Observer reports that he called Michiko Kakutani “the stupidest person in New York City.” It must have been something she wrote:

In that review, Ms. Kakutani wrote: “there is something oddly preening about [Franzen’s] self-inventory of sins, as though he actually reveled in being so disagreeable.” Also: “Just why anyone would be interested in pages and pages about [Franzen’s unhappy marriage] or the self-important and self-promoting contents of Mr. Franzen’s mind remains something of a mystery.”

In related news, another feuding writer-reviewer duo, Rick Moody and Dale Peck, have reconciled. Peck, you may recall, famously called Moody “the worst writer of his generation.” And there’s video, too.

On Galleycat, Emily Gould asks whether they’re being sincere:

This is cute and all, but there’s a chummy, clubby aspect of the ‘reconciliation’ that bothers me. Does Peck really take back everything he ever said about, say,’The Black Veil?’ Does he still care fervently about literature and how it’s marketed, or is he just spending his free time swimming around in a vault full of money a la Scrooge McDuck now that his sci-fi project with the dude from Heroes sold for $3 million?

Hey, if a cream pie doesn’t demonstrate sincerity, I don’t know what does!

A: $100,000

The New York Times reports that Gary Snyder (Back on the Fire, 2007) has won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.