LUDIC LOG

"Good morning, and welcome once again to Bookchat. Today our guest is the always-controversial arts biographer, Mr. Tyrell Hokus. Mr. Hokus, good day to you."

"Good morning, Ross."

"Tom."

"Ross."

"I can assure you."

"Well, hell. Sorry about that. I could have sworn it was Ross."

"Think nothing of it. You're getting closer every time. Well, Mr. Hokus, I assume that if you're on my show, you have another of your daring, audacious and minimally researched biographies to hawk. What could possibly follow in the footsteps of such dubious masterpieces as Maurice Ravel: Big Disgusting Frenchie Queer, Graham Greene: Who Does That Swishy Pom Think He's Fooling Anyway?, and your latest work, The Brontes: Shag-Twiddlers, Every Last One of Them?"

"Not a bit of it, Tom. I'm actually out of the biography business. It's a mug's game."

"Really."

"Sure. I want to be on 'Good Morning America' and 'The Tonight Show'. I don't know why I keep turning up on this show."

"That makes several thousand of us."

"Which is exactly my point. I just bought a new house. I'm not going to be able to afford a double redwood hot tub on the cheese I make off the pitiful highbrown junk I sell to your lot."

"If it makes you feel any better, I don't imagine any of our viewers have actually bought your books."

"Anyway, I'm going where the money is. My new book is fiction."

"Not much of a change for you, really."

"How's that?"

"Well, most of your previous works, with the possible exception of the subject's name, were fictional."

"Not a bit of it!"

"In Robert Frost: A Dog-Wanker Remembered, you claimed that Frost was an unconvicted serial murderer and a member of the American Nazi Party."

"For all I or anyone else knows, he was."

"You also claim that he was Belgian."

"He was! Originally."

"And a composer."

"What's your point?"

"Tell us about your novel. Please."

"About bloody time. It's called The Celestine Prophecies."

"Hasn't that name already been used?"

"You can't copyright a title, so says my agent."

"And what is it about?"

"Well, you know that other book what's called The Celestine Prophecies?"

"Vaguely."

"It's the same thing."

"What, you just copied it?"

"Right. And it's bound to do well. The first time round it sold like you wouldn't believe."

"Word for word?"

"Nah, I changed the names of some of the characters, to make it fresh. I figure no one'll remember the last go-round. It was ages ago."

"Mr. Hokus, you can't simply take someone else's work and put your name on it and claim it as your own. That's against the law."

"Stuff and nonsense, Tom. People do it all the time in the publishing game. It's called 'ghostwriting'."

"But...traditionally, one pays one's ghostwriter. Also, the ghostwriter produces original work. Also, the ghostwriter is usually aware that his work is being published under someone else's name."

"I'm sure if that were the case, my publisher would have let me know."

"All your books are self-published, Mr. Hokus."

"Well, I figured someone would ring me up just the same."

"Mr. Tyrell Hokus, ladies and gentlemen, has been our guest on Bookchat."

"Can I tell them about my next project, The Hunt for Red October by Not Tom Clancy?"

"Perhaps next time."