In the 1920s, mapmakers drew towns that were not there. Open Culture told the story this week: invented places, printed with a straight face among the real ones — and at least one that eventually became real anyway, willed into existence by the document that had made it up. It reads as cartographic mischief. It is also the most useful thing in this week's literary news, because the question underneath it turned up again days later in a far less charming form: how do you prove a document is what it claims to be?
The Guardian reports that a debut crime novel, Call Me, I'll Hide the Body by Jerry Falade, has been withdrawn by its agents after doubts emerged about whether artificial intelligence played a role in writing it. The manuscript had reportedly drawn an offer of more than $2m. The reason given for pulling it is the part worth sitting with: the agents said they could no longer authenticate "how the manuscript evolved."
Not whether the book was good. How it evolved — the drafts, the dead ends, the slow accumulation that has always sat behind a finished book and has almost never been asked to take the witness stand.