Monkey's Marginalia, No. 8 or Books Uncovered and Masks Removed

1. On the Eotvos Wheel website, one of Guthrie MacInnes' books, A Swindle of Cowbirds (1966), is listed. The book is reputed to have been published in 1966.  It just occurred to me today why the title sounded so familiar.  Please let me direct you to A Confederacy of Dunces.  Written by John Kennedy Toole, it is considered a comic masterpiece (and by me, too).  Sadly, Toole did not live to see his novel's success.  Toole had been working with a publisher and after several revisions, the publisher rejected the novel.  Toole ended his correspondence with the publisher in 1966.  In 1969, Toole committed suicide.  It was the only due to efforts of Toole's mother that the book was published posthumously.

2. Essad Bey, this is one authorship controversy that Dorst has never mentioned (to my knowledge) but seems to be the stuff S. is made of.  Essad Bey is believed to be Lev Nussimbaum and according to Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist, Nussimbaum probably used the pseudonym Kurban Said.  Nussimbaum, though prolific, liked to play fast and loose with the facts, so much so, that his non-fictions works are considered garbage today by serious academics.  All of them. There is also some question as to whether he enlisted the help of additional authors due to the large number of books that are attributed to him.

Another interesting thing of note is that he started using the name Essad Bey to write for Die literarische Welt (The Literary World) in 1926.  His politics were far-right; he was considered required reading in Nazi Germany until his Jewish heritage was discovered;  and he was even contracted to write a biography of Mussolini until the nature of his origins came to light.

3.  It was through Essad Bay and Tom Reiss' book that I came across another authorship controversy.  Ali and Nino (1937) by Kurban Said. The players in this drama are:

• Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels von Bodmershof.  Although her niece asserts the baroness's authorship, the baroness could have easily gained control of the copyright in Nazi Germany since Nissumbaum, as a Jew, would have had no legal right to assert his ownership of the book as its author. 
• The book is partially written by Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli with Nussimbaum filling the rest with passages cribbed from his prior writings. 
• The book is plagiarized from The Snake's Skin (1926) by Grigol Robakidze.  

4.  And finally, The Snake's Skin appears to echo the idea found in Borges' The Aleph, except the entire world is not found in space at the 19th step in the cellar, but within the book itself.  From wikipedia.org:

The novel The Snake’s Skin is about entire universe, where the space is complete and united. The scene takes place at the entire planet: the West and the East; Russia, Europe and finally Robakidze’s motherland – Georgia. Here one may also find an imaginary world of American billionaire living in his villa at Mediterranean Sea along with various prominent artists.
There is only one tense in the The Snake’s Skin – present, but it includes past and future as well. The main thing is reality, but myths and legends are part of this reality. The way of thinking is not only particularly human, but at the same time metaphysical and idealistic.
The personages of the novel do not live in the particular time period, or represent persons with concrete nationality. The author describes generalized citizen of the world that gets transformed into a particular person or in other words, returns to his roots (actual father, motherland), oneself, and the God. This is an adventure of Archibald Mekeshi’s soul taking place throughout the centuries.

Disappointingly, it appears that a English translation isn't available.

(8/9/14 edited for grammar and clarity, tags added)