While Not Watching the Big Game...

My original plans for today included going to a Super Bowl party at the fabu mountain home of Darling Husband's boss. But flu (caught from Darling Child, who has since recovered) intervened, and now I'm home alone on the couch. With laptop on and the TV off, thank you very much, as I honestly couldn't care less about football. Plus I have a wicked headache, in addition to the raspy throat and runny nose. DH is recording the game, so I'll just watch the musical performances & commercials later. (The Rolling Stones at half-time?! I'm still trying to get my mind around that...)

Now is the perfect time to catch up with correspondence; better yet if it's the foreign kind. And voilá! What should be in my Inbox but an email from a cousin in England and one from Canadian author Kenneth J. Harvey, with a link to an amusing piece he wrote in reference to the Frey fracas, "The facts. Don't give me the facts," which ran in The Times (London) and Toronto Star. Harvey satirically argues that too much fact in Banville’s THE SEA raises questions about its authenticity as fiction. Then he goes on to say:

In keeping with these principles, should not an author of fiction be fictional himself? Why should a writer who spends his life claiming that what he creates is entirely invented, be allowed to use his own name or live in a real house?

Hmm...I believe this perfectly describes the fictional fictionalist JT LeRoy.

And on a related subject, why isn't there a greater fracas in the media about Nasdijj the "Navahoax," whose lies (and literary thefts) were far more egregious than Frey's? I'm guessing it's because Nasdijj wasn't on Oprah; never mind that he received a PEN award, among others. Media credo: If an author falls in the forest and nobody saw it on Oprah, then it didn't make a sound.

Edit: Darling Husband phoned me at half-time, so I watched the Rolling Stones. The sound was lousy, but as usual, they put on quite a show. Their spindly black-clad figures were quite a striking contrast to the padded, beefy (porky!) football players. Mick sure is lithe & limber for a 60-year-old (ooh, those pelvic whirls & thrusts!) and Charlie Watts is tight & buff too. Wonder how the footballers will look at their age? [SHUDDER...]