The Irish Times

Publish these! Fictitious books we wish were real  

WITH ALAN PARTRIDGE’S memoir I, Partridge  flying off the shelves, maybe the time has come for some other books by fictitious characters.

A few years ago I was watching a classic Simpsons  episode with my brother. When Bart saves Mr Burns’s life by donating blood, the newly invigorated tycoon gets started on his epic biography, Will There Ever be a Rainbow? “That’d be a deadly book,” said my sibling.

And he’s right. Mr Burns has led an extraordinary life: abandoning his parents as a boy to live with a strange billionaire; fighting in the second World War for the Allies (but also befriending Nazis); inheriting an atom mill; getting to know Nixon and Elvis; pioneering international air travel (while stealing the only ever trillion-dollar bill); surviving a baby-inflicted gunshot wound; and, of course, establishing a nuclear power plant. It would read like a cross between the satirical humour of Well Remembered Days, by Arthur Mathews, and a sweeping historical epic.

In other fake characters’ books, there’s the appeal of the unreliable narrator. The CIA agent Osbourne Cox (played by John Malkovich) in Burn after Reading spends a lot of time on his “mem-wahs”. We know that he has an inaccurately high opinion of himself, so it would be fun trying to read between the lines, sifting the truth from his half-truths.

It’s not just writing fiction that attracts these characters. In the US version of The Office  , Michael Scott (Steve Carell) is penning the ill-advised corporate book Somehow I Manage.  This would be a great read, not least because Scott’s little speeches in the show already sound as if they’re from a disastrous self-help course: “The atmosphere that I’ve tried to create here is that I’m a friend first and a boss second, and probably an entertainer third.”

Often the appeal of these books would be much simpler. For example, Romancing the Stone  , written by Kathleen Turner’s character in the film of the same name, seems a potentially lively love story/swashbuckler. The passages of the book Emma Thompson is writing in Stranger Than Fiction  are quite elegant, and what we hear of the hero’s massive mission statement (written by the film’s director, Cameron Crowe) in Jerry Maguire  is rousing.

As we’ve seen with the Partridge book, when we’re lucky these works break the fourth wall and appear in real-life shops. The Mad Men  character Roger Sterling (played by John Slattery) has now written a memoir, Sterling’s Gold, and AMC, the TV company that makes the show, has seen fit to publish it. Sterling fought in the Korean War and followed that by working in the family business, a pioneering, influential ad agency. The book’s main selling point is the ad man’s cheeky dry wit. Sample quote: “When God closes a door, he opens a dress.”

Source: http://www.irishtimes.com