Bibliography of non-existing books

I found the book referenced with a short description in another book on writing term and final papers (I don't remember the name of that one either).
The book I'm looking for consists of a bibliography of works (books, papers, &c.) that the writer would have liked to seen published while writing his own PhD thesis. None of the entries actually exist. The original language is either English or German.

That is all I have. Thanks for your help!

I thought it might beThe Logogryph: A Bibliography Of Imaginary Books. The story doesn't seem quite right, however......

Could it be Catalog of Lost Books?
The Librarything entry is not very informative, but the description on Amazon suggests it might be it.

Both nice books, but the one I'm looking for doesn't have any narrative. It is just a list of books one would find in the references section of any textbook.
eg: el-Majnuna, T., "The psychological influence of the Pyramids on Egyptian ministerial officials", IFAO : Le Caire, 1958.

Thanks though :-)

Victor Borge's stories and essays mention many books that he never got around to writing. Don't know if anyone published a list.

Book 2, Chapter 7 of Rabelais' work Pantagruel has a long list of imaginary books from the library of the Abbey of St. Victor.

In imitation of Rabelais, there was Bibliotheca Parliamenti and Musaeum Clausum, both published in 1653.

Charles Dickens had a door in his house at Gad's Hill covered with fake book spines, including a 10 volume Catalogue of Statues to the Duke of Wellington, but I don't know if a list was ever published.

Paul Masson, an eccentric employee of the Bibliotheque Nationale made up fake book catalogue cards which, if collett::Collette is to be believed, ended up in the card catalogue. Again, don't know if a list exists.

pcollectiflovecrafth::H.P. Lovecraft cites numerous invented books in his Cthulhu saga.

Then there's The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature, recently published by Cow Heavy Books and described here

I can imagine someone spending a lifetime creating a bibliography of the imaginary books that are cited throughout the world's literature.

Hope this is helpful.
Os.

I hate to suggest this, since it's sort of antithetical to the purpose of this group, but maybe the book you're looking for is itself nonexistent? Maybe made up as a prank, and somehow it made its way into your book on writing?

Anyway, to add to the list of books that are close but not right, A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem is a collection of reviews of nonexistent books (plus a nonexistent Nobel laureate lecture and one or two others along these lines), and he wrote another, which I have but the title of which escapes me, of introductions to nonexistent books.

#5 Osbaldistone:

Thanks for the reference to The Official Catalog of the Library of Potential Literature. I just ordered a copy.

Borge or Borges?

@dukedom_enough: You are thinking of Imaginary Magnitude, I think.
Neither Lem book is a bibliography, though.

camillahoel,

Thats the one. Indeed, neither is a bibliography.

>7 bertilak: It would be Victor Borge. He wrote several music related books as well as being a great pianist and performer.

>10 pjfarm: Yes, Victor Borge was the famous (often comedic) pianist.

>5 Ealhmund: I believe you mean Jorge Luis Borges, rather than Victor Borge -- specifically, "Examination of the Writings of Herbert Quain" (http://frot.org/borges/quain.html), maybe?

And for the original poster, this may be of interest:

http://www.squidoo.com/bestnonbooks

>7 bertilak:, 10, and 11

Boy, am I red-faced. %^)
It's Borges, of course. Though a big fan of Victor as well, I'm not sure how his name slipped from my fingers when I was looking at a picture of Jorge Luis sitting at his desk at the moment I typed the name.

Just another reminder of why I stay anonymous on these websites. ;-)

Os.

No need for embarrassment! We store and access data based on phonemes as well as meaning. So, for instance, if you see pictures of fruits like "pears" and then are asked to name an animal you are more likely to come up with "bear", or "chair" as a piece of furniture .... When I do things like this (as I do much more than I did in my 20s!) I console myself with thinking I've observed something interesting about my brain. (-;

>12 Ealhmund:, 13

Yes! Blame it on the phoneme phenomenon!

(I have nothing to add, really. I just wanted to type "phoneme phenomenon." I mean, when will that opportunity come 'round again?)

14>
I just wanted to type "phoneme phenomenon...

This is a well-known urge, traceable to pheromones.

the same phenomenon that lead to me being told Morgan Freeman had been cast as the hobbit.

>12 Ealhmund: The strange thing about your mistake is that Victor Borge was likely to put made-up "facts" in his books and I wouldn't be surprised if some those were non-existent books.

>17 pjfarm:
Oh, yeah. Either Borge or Borges would be believable.

The notion of non-existent books and the problems for the people who unwittingly seek them is extensive. When I managed a bookstore that specialized in old children's books, we had many inquiries for books which were either extraordinarily scarce (and they hoped we wouldn't know) or did not exist at all. The key was determining which category each fell into.

Authors sometimes perpetrate their own brand of fun on readers. I sometimes wonder if they realize the extent which people will go to find their will-o-the-wisps. For example, William Goldman has his "good parts" version of The Princess Bride and indicates that it is abridged from some longer version by "S. Morganstern." Many people who seek this will not believe that there is no original longer version. This is not helped by him issuing The Silent Gondoliers as "S. Morganstern" with a jacket bio which pokes fun about how it is suggested that he does not exist but is very real to his wife and children. One gets the impression that Goldman doesn't like used booksellers much.

In the juvenile series book field, collectors soon become completists. A gap in a series, even though the books need not be read in order, leaves a pang of absence which many collectors feel compelled to fill.

However, in this field there is also a category known as "phantom titles". Most often these are books which were listed or advertised in some way but not actually published. Sometimes these listings appear at the end of a story as the next title announcement and for some reason the title was changed or the series was canceled before it could be written and/or published. Some titles were advertised in post-text ads or even magazine ads that were not ultimately published. Sometimes an entire series was advertised but not published. This is an example of a "phantom series."

Another area where phantom titles may exist is the title page where other stories by the author were listed. In an effort to bolster the literary credentials of a pen name, it was not unheard of for them to include titles planned but not issued.

James

# 19 Keeline:

My favorite example is The Castle of the Otter which was an erroneous rumor about a book Gene Wolfe was writing named The citadel of the autarch. Wolfe then obligingly wrote The Castle of the Otter to fill the niche.

And then there is Venus on the Half-Shell, which started as virtual and became actual.

@bertilak, >20 bertilak:

I have an even better example a fellow bookseller told me about. In England there was a Yellow Pages ad about an older gentleman who goes from bookstore to bookstore seeking a book about Fly Fishing by J. R. Hartley. The video of the ad can be found here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abt6wGtWVX8).

Of course, people started asking for the book in the used bookstores and it was on so many want lists that it was getting a reputation for being a very scarce book. So of course someone got the bright idea to actually write one and have Fly Fishing published under this name. It is now no longer quite as scarce on the used book databases.

There are even some copies on LT.

I grabbed a photo of the "author" from the commercial and added an explanation to the author page. I see "Hartley" is also associated with a second fly fishing book and even a golfing book.

Not bad for a figment of an ad agency's imagination?

James Keeline

#21 Keeline,

Excellent! Of course, one wonders if the old gent was J. R. Hartley.

>22 bertilak:,

No. That's the whole point.

The book did not exist when the commercial was aired. It was requested by many people. Some enterprising chap decided to fill the need with a book using the title and author name.

I don't think the actor in the TV commercial was J. R. Hartley if that is what you are asking. It's hard to track actors in commercials since that is not included in the IMDB.

James

The actor in the JR Hartley ads (there were two - Fly Fishing and A New Passion where he takes up golf) was Norman Lumsden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Lumsden

He has an even better connection to books than as a fictional author - he designed book jackets for Hodder & Stoughton according to wikipedia!

Do not forget I Libertine

http://bobkaye.com/ilibertine.html

25> Oh, that's a great story! I never heard of it before. I'll be keeping an eye out for the book...