British Author Espies a Funerary Violin Vacuum and So Fills It
It seems to be just another esoteric historical tome published to appeal to an academic audience: “An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin,” by Rohan Kriwaczek, a nonfiction account of a little-known genre of music that was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church and almost wiped out by the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830’s and 40’s, according to the winter catalog for the Overlook Press.
Except for a few niggling details. There is no such thing as a funerary violin, said several leading violin scholars. There were no Great Funerary Purges. And Mr. Kriwaczek did not graduate from the Royal Academy of Music in 1974, as his biography claims, or receive a lifetime achievement award from the International Federation of Funeral Directors, an organization that appears to exist only on the author’s personal Web site.
The book is the latest manifestation of a continuing silly season in the London literary world, which began with a secret message embedded in a court ruling involving “The Da Vinci Code” in the spring and has more recently produced a hoax love letter published in a major biography. But Mr. Kriwaczek’s book, set for publication in Britain later this month by Duckworth Publishers, tricked even Peter Mayer, his publisher at the American publishing house Overlook, who bought the book last year believing it was an authentic historical work of nonfiction. (Duckworth referred all questions to Mr. Mayer.)
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