Mother Tongue Annoyances

I've always loved libraries. Actual, honest-to-goodness, brick-and-mortar libraries. From my earliest days of consciousness to today, I am at my most comfortable when I am peacefully browsing the stacks of a big ol' public or academic library.

However, today I would like to speak to you not of a library into which you can walk and sit down, but rather a virtual, invisible library that exists only in the imagination of the author and his or her readers. What do I mean?

Recently I stumbled upon this fascinating Web site named, pragmatically enough, The Invisible Library. I'll allow the site's proprietors describe what their place is all about:

The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.

Wow—you would be well-advised spending some time reading this Web site! As you may already know if you have been following my weblog, one of my two favorite authors is Vladimir Nabokov. As can be expected, his masterpiece Lolita is listed in The Invisible Library. After all, most Nabokov fans know that the Lolita novel is itself an "autobiographical manuscript" entitled Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male, written by none other than Professor Humbert Humbert, the story's protagonist and narrator!

Another fiction author with a ton of "invisible" works to his credit is Stephen King. I'm a great fan of King's earlier works (say, pre-1990). In point of fact, King sometimes made surprise visits to Cornell on his motorcycle while I was a student there. Following are three of the more humorous or colorful hidden books by Stephen King that are listed at Invisible Library:

• The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan, by Gordon Lachance (Different Seasons)
• Everybody Drops the Dime, by Morton Rainey (Four Past Midnight)
• Purple Daze, by Thad Beaumont (The Dark Half)

Wikipedia has a list of fictional books that you may want to check out as well.

Have a great day!