Moishe Pipik Strikes Again?

Last week, we noted on this Philip Roth Society blog that many online booksellers were listing a new title by Roth, Notes for My Biographer, as a May 2012 release. Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and many other very prominent online merchants had all listed the book as a biography and with a projected publication date, but with little other information. The Roth Society tried contacting Roth’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, as well as his agent at the Wylie Agency, about additional information on this title, but no response was forthcoming. Although last week’s blog posting helped to cause a minor buzz about this “new title” (which you can find by doing a simple Google search), we learned nothing new about the Amazon.com et al. listings. Now, those listings have been removed from most of the booksellers’ websites (although as of today, Powell’s still has it in their preorder inventory), so perhaps merchants were jumping the gun on any announcement of any such book by Philip Roth…if indeed any such book is actually in the works. One finds it difficult to imagine that such august and responsible booksellers as Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com could have been duped. On the other hand, there has always been a certain amount of playfulness that surrounds Roth’s writings. Perhaps this is just an example of that impish doppelgänger, Moishe Pipik, playing with all of us once again.