The Literature of Reduction

Abstract

“I conspired to convince the McGraw-Hill Book Company that I was in communication with Howard Hughes, and in fact I was not.” With that it was over. Looking back, a brief fling for Clifford Irving: the whopping advance for an “autobiography” of Hughes, certain to become the book of the year; then the day-by-day disclosures on front pages and evening newscasts that it was all a hoax; the Time cover story (“Con Man of the Year”) with color portrait by Elmyr de Hory, the art-forger subject of living's prophetic book Fake!; the slide from media sight in favor of Nixon in China and politicians on the primary stump; finally the terse confession in Manhattan District Court. A very brief fling—though at the time, the late winter of 1972, the Hughes-Irving story seemed to run on endlessly, and of course isn't over yet. The legal tangle goes on and rumor is that Irving is coming out with a book about the other book—which, we now guess, might have been the point all along.