Fictional book

Fictional books are imaginary books, that is, books that don't actually exist. But they “exist” in so far as they are referred to in real books.

A well-known example is the narrative study of the work of Herbert Quain the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges , in the anthology 1944 fictions (Ficciones) was published. In the form of a critical essay, the story describes the imaginary works by Herbert Quain, a non-existent author, created between 1933 and 1939. The same applies to the reviews of Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote and The Way to Almotasim, which also appeared in the fictions .

In his preface to the fictions , Borges ironically explains why he chose this type of anthology:

“It is tedious and exhausting nonsense to write long books; to roll out a thought on five hundred pages, the perfectly adequate exposition of which takes a few minutes. It is better to proceed in such a way that one pretends that these books already exist and provides a résumé, a commentary. [...] Out of greater shrewdness, greater ineptitude, greater laziness, I preferred to write notes on imaginary books. "

Another typical example is The Complete Empty (also called The Absolute Vacuum ) by the Polish author Stanislaw Lem , in whose work several fictional books are described. The anthology contains 16 reviews; 15 of them relate to nonexistent books. The first review refers to the anthology itself, so it is the only one that refers to a real book. The author of the review - it is of course Lem himself - refers to the following by way of introduction:

“Writing reviews of non-existent books is not Lem's invention; Such attempts are not only found in a contemporary writer - J. L. Borges. "

For example, in the second part of his Encheiridion Vandalicum in 2012, Jürgen Buchmann presented an imaginary contemporary Lower Sorbian literature that is extensively quoted and discussed in six reviews. Another fictional work is the Necronomicon , a magical book invented by the American author HP Lovecraft in the 1920s, which is part of Lovecraft's Cthulhu myth . It is not the only fictional book that appears in Lovecraft's work; "The Book of Eibon" or "Inexpressible Cults" by the fictional author Friedrich Wilhelm von Junzt are also mentioned again and again.

Fictional libraries, or pseudo-bibliographies, are another way to refer to fictional books. The first example can be found in Rabelais ' Gargantua and Pantagruel , where the author invents a complete monastery library, the titles of which were intended as a satire against the prevailing scholastic theology. Johann Fischart continues the Catalogus Catalogorum perpetuo durabilis or Perpetual Catalog of Catalogs published in 1590 , in which 526 titles are listed with which the author polemics against the Protestant-theological literature predominant in his homeland. With the advent of bibliophilia towards the end of the 19th century, interest in these directories also arose. In France, the bibliographer Pierre Gustave Brunet did a great job of researching the bibliothèques imaginaires . In Germany, it was Hugo Hayn in particular who researched this literature. Famous is a work written by Anton Kippenberg for the Leipzig bibliophiles, which was published under the title Library Meyer-Stallupönen . A few more recent books continue the genre, such as the 2003 work Akute Literatur by Hartwig Rademacher, which consists of around 1000 invented titles, as well as books that the world still needs . Ads and reviews of the Kladderadatsch , ed. by Ulrich Goerdten (see literature!).

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literature

• Paolo Albani e Paolo della Bella: Mirabiblia. Catalogo ragionato di libri introvabili . Bologna: Zanichelli, 2003.
• Jorge Luis Borges : Fictions: Stories 1939-1944 . Fischer Taschenbuch 2012, ISBN 3-596-10581-1
• Jürgen Buchmann : Encheiridion Vandalicum: The book of the Wends . Reinecke & Voß 2012, ISBN 3-942901-02-1
• Johann Fischart : Catalogus Catalogorum . Niemeyer 1993, ISBN 3-484-28046-8
• Stanislaw Lem : The complete emptiness . Suhrkamp 1981, ISBN 3-518-37207-6
• Rabelais : Gargantua and Pantagruel . Insel Verlag 1974, ISBN 3-458-31777-5
• Hartwig Rademacher: Acute literature . Merve 2003, ISBN 3-88396-191-4
• Bernd Wahlbrinck: Unbelievable: Reviews of books that were never written . Tumbelwied 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-029514-0
• Ulrich Goerdten (Ed.): Books that the world still needs . Advertisements and reviews of the Kladderadatsch from 1872 to 1907. Compiled, edited and provided with an afterword, published in Edition Schwarzdruck, Gransee 2018. ISBN 978-3-935194-95-2

Individual evidence

1. ↑ fixpoetry.com , accessed November 22, 2012
2. ^ Gustave Brunet: Imprimeurs imaginaires et libraires supposées. Étude bibliographique. Suivie de recherches sur quelques ouvrages imprimés avec des indications fictives de lieux ou avec des dates singulières. B. Franklin, New York 1963. ( Burt Franklin research & source works series 153, 34). First Paris: Librairie Tross, 1866
3. ^ Hugo Hayn (Ed.): Proposal for a reading library for young women . A bibliographical-erotic curiosum from the year 1780. By Carl Friedrich Wegener. With annotations and a list of joking catalogs (lives imaginaires) edited by Hugo Hayn. Jahnke, Borna-Leipzig 1889
4. ↑ Catalog / of the still existing part / of the collections of Mr. / Emil Meyer / Président d'honneur de la societé internationale / des trois bibliophiles, who / which once comprised / all of world literature, who died in Stallupönen . . . . Fürböter's Antiquariat, Nuremberg, Leipziger Strasse 44. Catalog No. 517. 1925
5. ^ Die Welt , accessed November 24, 2012