Confusion, Books of Fiction, and Fictional Books

So, apparently, the prominent philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy used spoof books by a fictional philosophy as a primary source for his attack on Kant. (Read all about it in the NYT.)

This is pretty funny of itself, but apparently Lévy’s research issues were first blamed on Wikipedia, to which he responded: “My source of information is books, not Wikipedia.” Oops. So it appears that in this case, the problem could actually be not using Wikipedia, as if you search the name of said fictional philosopher (Jean-Baptiste Botul), you are redirected straight to the page of his creator, Frédéric Pagès. (Which rather does take the fun out of, doesn’t it? Ah, well.)

Anyway, the real point being that this reminds me of something awesome I found on Wikipedia recently: the “List of Fictional Books”. (Not works of fiction, but “non-existent book[s] created specifically for (i.e. within) a work of fiction.”

This website, “The Fictional World of Archives, Art Galleries, and Museums” looks pretty awesome too.