What was the last lie you told? Was it when you told your housemate you had no idea who ate his home-grown butternut pumpkin (the one he’d lovingly cultivated for three months)? Was it when you told your partner they were and/or are the sole human occupant of your sexual fantasies? Or was it when you posed as an accomplished poet and convinced The Monthly to publish your Grade 3 masterpiece, ‘My Chickenpox Scab’? If it was the latter, chances are you didn’t get away with it. But if you did, you might just find yourself immortalised in print among the fantasists and charlatans of Simon Caterson’s Hoax Nation.
Though we at Hat condone tactful truth-telling at all times, we also endorse this latest morsel from Arcade Publications. And not surprisingly, as Hoax Nation reveals an endogenous tendency in Australians to compromise the truth for the sake of a healthy story. Caterson’s compendium of literary, scholarly, political and biological falsities is comprehensive and compelling in the way only the infamous among us – Helen Dimedenko, Ern Malley, Norma Khouri, Nino Culotta et al – can be. Plus, it fits in any* pocket.
*man-sized only.
RRP $18 / ISBN 978-0-9804367-4-7
Available through Arcade Publications
Published on 19 March 2010 by Kirsten Law