February 01, 2004
A Bonobo Chimpanzee wrote Infinite Jest with the help of 13-year-old Mark Leyner.
From an interview in Salon with Leyner:
Q. In the novel, you as a 13-year-old, with your partner, a genetically altered bonobo chimp, write quite a few novels during your spare time.
You use pseudonyms made from anagrams of the names of famous Bougainvillean ... A. ... tetherball players. Although, I used minor league tetherball players, because some of the big ones were so famous. I didn't want people to figure it out, and certainly in Bougainville, it would be easy to figure it out. We didn't want to anagramize Off-Ramp Tivana Poo Poo, for example. Q. You came up with such names as Donna Tartt, Douglas Coupland, Elizabeth Wurtzel and Martin Amis. Then when you come back to the states, you discover that impostors have claimed to be these mythical "hot" young novelists, when actually, you wrote all those books.
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A very old (old in dog years, anyway) interview with Leyner, that. First page of the interview is here. I loved Et Tu, Babe, but that was what, a decade ago?