50 Literary Rumors (with Megan Boyle)

Gathering up the word on the street about such heads as Rachel Cusk, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ocean Vuong, Michel Houellebecq, Lydia Davis, and more.

[ Odd items by BB, Even items by MB ]

1. Lydia Davis eats the same breakfast (Sweet Onion Teriyaki on Italian Parmesan Oregano) at the same Subway location every weekday when not abroad, religiously arriving in time to be the first customer through the door.

2. Rachel Cusk uses the Dujreizian alphabet and characters. Dujreizian is an ancient language with uncertain origins. It reads like English, however its pronunciation, word, and sentence structure (even glyph/character placement) could not be more different. Once translated, Cusk’s work is revealed to have themes of incest, Harry Potter fan-fic, and “torture porn.”

3. Michael Ondaatje invented and continues to work extensively on the marketing and branding for Wet Ones. 

4. Joshua Cohen allows few into what he considers his "inner circle," because of the ritual induction to the circle he's devised, which involves letting Josh suck one's left pinkie finger for up to ten minutes (the ten block is reserved for “particularly 'good specimens.'"). In social situations, Josh may appear preoccupied—this is because he is not only constantly assessing the quality of left pinkie digits that surround him, but devoting a great deal of energy to disguising the fact that he is doing this.

5. Karl Ove Knausgaard believes the person he sees in public restroom mirrors is someone else, but in all other mirrors it’s definitely him.

6. Between 1922-1953, Ludwig Wittgenstein produced 17 unique works that bear uncanny resemblance in tone, character development, and raunchiness to modern-day scripts for B-movie buddy comedies. He titled these works, “Meine große Traumlebensgeschichte" (“My Great Dream Lifestory”), and only showed them once, to a trusted former student, with instructions to burn them after his death.

7. Kelly Link is afraid of unscrewing lightbulbs due to her phobia that the surrounding building will collapse.

8. Joy Williams' desktop background is a cream-colored 1995 Hummer H1. She won't answer any questions about it, but sometimes she'll point out its "peanut butter ice cream seats" to houseguests. 

9. On her deathbed, Marguerite Duras incorrectly predicted that the Jacksonville Jaguars would defeat the Houston Texans 84 to 83 in Super Bowl 50.

10. If you stand in front of Margaret Atwood holding eye contact without moving or speaking for what feels like an extended moment, a huge grin spreads across her face and she playfully repeatedly rams into you, trying to bump you with her head.

11. Anne Carson thinks writing is therapy but is afraid if she ever admits it she’ll never write again.

12. George Saunders is allergic to sand, celery, and anything oval-shaped, but only between the hours of 4-7pm (in the winter, 2-5pm). His rare condition is called chronoallergic rhinitus–shared only, as far as we know, with retired tennis player Fabrice Santoro, who holds the record for most losses in singles play, and the most appearances in singles competition at Grand Slam events.

13. Rachel Kushner still goes to the Brownies troop of her youth as regularly as possible to sit in the back of the meeting and watch silently.

14. Ocean Vuong believed he was pregnant on and off for about six months–though if he were being truthful, the lingering suspicions took more like nine months to completely stop.

15. César Aira was released from Doordash after accruing a sub 2-star Dasher rating across 300+ orders in two months for consistently delivering partially consumed meals.

16. Nicholson Baker cured his insomnia in 1991 by eating a paper towel before bed. The restless nights he's experienced since can be attributed to forgetting to bring enough supply while traveling and his resulting experiments with tissues, cocktail napkins, and once, a washcloth.

17. Dorothea Lasky is Vito Acconci’s goddaughter’s niece.

18. Miranda July's biggest fan is Donald Trump. He first wrote her in 2008, moved in a way he couldn't recall ever feeling, after reading No One Belongs Here More Than You. For years, the two entertained an unlikely friendship, completely void of political discussion, built around an expansive network of inside jokes resembling non-sexual roleplay, and sending each other on something like "scavenger hunts."

19. Kate Zambreno has seen Moneyball more than 250 times and secretly ranks Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as Art Howe top 5 all time.

20. Charles Bukowski died a virgin.

21. Haruki Murakami dictates his novels aloud to Satan and then “discovers” them wrapped in plastic under his pillow upon completion.

22. Neil Gaiman is responsible for over half of the hate mail Radiohead received between Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows.

23. J.K. Rowling is Satoshi Nakamoto.

24. Michel Houellebecq was born and raised in Ellettsville, Indiana. His parents bred Shiba Inus.

25. Pierre Guyotat held the speedrun world record for Super Mario World (All Castles, No Cape) from 8:04 am to 2:25 pm on 9/11/2021.

26. Lorrie Moore likes to park on semi-urban streets and blare rockabilly songs with her windows down on her days off, imagining The One will see her, only vaguely sensing who or what The One is. She does this for as long as she can stand it.

27. Jane Hirshfield butters her bread with her fingies.

28. Sheila Heti’s pseudonym is Lee Child. She began her publishing career at age 21, with The Killing Floor.

29. Tom Hanks (author) records his breathing while he sleeps and listens to it throughout the following day on headphones.

30. Gordon Lish obstinately insists that ice is not made of water, "It's made of ice!" He’s lost friends over arguments about the conspiracy that ice is made of water. 

31. Walter Kirn wrote and designed the original “In This House, We Believe Science is Real, Black Lives Matter, No Human is Illegal, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, Love is Love, Kindness First” sign.

32. Jon Fosse loves the winter, because it's the only time he doesn't feel guilty for going off the grid, watching his "comfort cycle" (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Best Man Holiday [or anything with Taye Diggs], and dubbed anime ["The subtitles demand too much"]), and eating as much Rice Chex with honey and no milk as he wants.

33. Michel Butor is on the Epstein list, the Diddy list, and a third not yet known list.

34. Ben Lerner reads every marketing email he receives, because even though he knows they're not intended for him specifically, they still make him feel kind of special and connected to the world.

35. Jenny Erpenbeck has never won a game of solitaire despite her crippling addiction to computer games included with Windows.

36. Starting in January, Annie Ernaux sends weekly reminders about her annual Christmas party. All of these texts begin, “I hope it’s not strange that I’m texting you from the bath haha.” If she texts from the bath at any other time during the year, she does not include this information.

37. Franz Wright had the Barb Wire tribal tattoo around the head of his penis.

38. Kurt Vonnegut’s October 1962 vacation to Cuba was extended nearly a month, as regulations during the Cuban Missile Crisis prevented international travel. Becoming dreary with the tropical conditions, he parked himself at a bar near a government building, where he overheard two U.S. officials discussing Kennedy’s plan to “Go full nuclear,” based on the last communication they received from Khrushchev. Vonnegut posed as a secret Soviet agent close to Khrushchev and corrected them, setting off a course of events that would stop the Cold War.

39. Enrique Vila-Matas refuses to enter bookshops unless he is first performatively admonished by a cashier for impersonating Enrique Vila-Matas.

40. Fernando Pessoa wanted The Book of Disquiet to be titled My ‘Xiety (Mi ‘Siedad).

41. Diane Williams has been thrown out of multiple casinos for refusing to accept that three of a kind doesn’t beat a straight or a flush.

42. Friedrich Nietzsche would fast all day and travel to the spas at Baden-Baden, where for hours he’d alternate between sitting in a sauna for ten minutes, then immediately plunging into a near-freezing pool for five. In theory, he did this to fraternize with the duality in man, but in practice, he found that he just liked how it felt to get all woozy and giggly before almost losing consciousness.

43. DFW spent his last 8 months playing “The Floor is Lava” as if his life depended on it.

44. Jose Saramago owns ⅓ of the purchasable sulfur on earth. He was presented with an opportunity to buy it, and the bargain really felt too good to pass up, because it was one of those once in a lifetime kinds of deals, and when would he come upon an offer like this again? He also owns about two acres of land in the Florida panhandle. He also converted his garage into an arboretum of mostly bonsai trees.

45. The entire masthead of Granta all sleep in the same big ol’ racecar bed.

46. Ann Beattie has selective telepathy; she can only hear others’ thoughts about parallel parking. Once she heard a social security number, but she didn’t know whose it was.

47. Marilynne Robinson cut 620,000 words out of Housekeeping in the final 48 hours before turning it in.

48. Bret Easton Ellis rents a storage unit where he keeps his rare, mostly "squishy toy" stuffed animals–the rarest being a limited edition Oktoberfest cheese fondue pot from the Melting Pot franchise. This hobby started for him in 1997, with the Princess Diana Beanie Baby. He keeps this prized collectable in a polystyrene display case, locked in his closet safe. This is the only Beanie Baby he owns; the rest, he feels, belong to everyone.

49. Kenneth Goldsmith has dressed up “like a 4-leaf clover having its leaves plucked off and regenerated like Prometheus” every Halloween since he was baptized “in honor of (his mother)’s right to choose.”

50. Jonathan Franzen deals with an anomalous condition, similar to body integrity disorder (where sufferers feel as though parts of their body do not belong to them and seek voluntary amputation). Franzen has always felt that he has a third leg, protruding from his lower back, serving as a kind of kickstand. Before he started publishing, he was known to frequently fall backwards, convinced his back-leg would be there to support him. After The Corrections, his symptoms mysteriously dissipated.