Master of the hoax finally goes straight.

July 11, 2008 6:10 AM

Master of the hoax finally goes straight. Clifford Irving, author of the now infamous Autobiography of Howard Hughes, publishes his own autobiography, Phantom Rosebuds. Irving has already covered the story of that Hughes forgery pretty thoroughly in his earlier book, The Hoax, and Lasse Hallstrom retold the story in a film starring Richard Gere. Phantom Rosebuds though makes a case for the rest of Irving’s life - f for fake, the subsequent novels, the jail time and the dramatic consequences of the hoax which draw him into a world of espionage, renegade presidents, and rogue hitmen.
posted by blimp77 (5 comments total)

Writing your memoirs is considered going straight?
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:23 AM on July 11, 2008

Because I too was like him, and the things I had done and seen had silenced me completely. And the lessons of history and being in that bomber, designed by Hughes, that had dropped the A-Bomb onto Nagasaki the day after Hiroshima. Want to know the truth? I don’t think it was Hughes who held that press conference denouncing me. It was probably Jason Robards or someone hired by the Hughes Corporation. The real Hughes was the man of my imagination...

Uh... the guy's fucking nuts.

Then again, maybe Kevin Killian -- if that's his real name -- is just pulling an Irving.
posted by cedar at 10:08 AM on July 11, 2008

What a dreadful book title.
posted by thinkpiece at 10:18 AM on July 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

All else aside, I recommend F for Fake to people as often as I can. The narrative is disjointed, the cinematography is weirdly trippy, but Welles is so god-awful charming it totally makes up for it. He spends the majority of the film like a kid in a candy store just chilling with friends, eating giant meals, wandering around, and just being huge and strange.
posted by mikoroshi at 1:02 PM on July 11, 2008

Then again, maybe Kevin Killian -- if that's his real name -- is just pulling an Irving.

KILLIAN IS LYING TO YOU.
posted by RokkitNite at 2:20 PM on July 11, 2008