Wed, 18 Jan

Here’s an update about my ex-client I mentioned last time. He’s described in the headline as a “serial catfisher”—such an odd modern term. The thing is, though, just like about 45-55% of “people”/characters I see on Twitter, to me his personae were obviously made up. Read any of his writing and it’s all about middle-aged men pretending to be women online. That didn’t seem to change even when he was pretending to be a 21yo anarchy babe. What was particularly interesting to me, and what the journalist did not make clear in the article, was that the book I was representing was about a middle-aged man pretending to be a woman online who also committed a violent murder.

Where did the personal experience stop and the imagination begin? I don’t think he was really a violent murderer, but he had a vivid and particularly descriptive imagination for murder and torture, and on the basis of his work I wouldn’t have spent an afternoon alone with him. And if I had the resources I would probably look into unsolved murder cases in Berlin that smell like the one described in the book I was representing . . . you know, just in case. But the blurred lines were truly fascinating. And, you know, he wasn’t particularly engaged with the editorial process—I think he wanted to tell his stories precisely as he wrote them the first time. Which I hope was not an effort, for once, to tell the truth.

I would say that it’s clear to anyone who engages with him that he’s not a well man, but I don’t wish him any harm, and (as I also told the journalist) I’m delighted to see that he’s kept on trucking with regard to getting himself involved in bizarre internet scrapes, even if I find the content of some of his more outré opinions disturbing. I’m working—and I have always worked—under the assumption that his subversion is primarily imaginary. Maybe that’s a dangerous assumption.