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.