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Yesterday, we invited Eric Jarosinski, aka Nein Quarterly, to guest tweet on the Oxford Academic Twitter account. Instead of our usual academic news and insights, followers were treated to #OxfordMisfortuneCookies and other wisdom. As a former professor, Eric is all too familiar with the many absurdities of academia, which he addresses with his trademark voice of "utopian negation". Here's a brief compilation of his tweets.

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It sort of defeats the purpose to write a post that reminds folks that it’s April Fool’s Day in the post’s very title, doesn’t it?  I guess I can’t go about claiming wild and wacky things, like Peter Sieruta used to.  Remember his 2012 post on “Selznick syndrome” or 2011′s Charlie Sheen Lands Children’s Book Deal or 2009′s Graveyard Book to Be Stripped of Newbery, or (my personal favorite) his 2008 Ramona piece de resistance?  No?  Then go read them.  The man knew from pranks.

This year pranking is doing very well in the middle grade category.  Mac Barnett and Jory John put out that great The Terrible Two (reviewed best by Travis Jonker).  I’d count The Tapper Twins Go to War by Geoff Rodkey as a great prank book as well.  And if we want to look at books that have come out in the past, I was always fond of Kim Baker’s Pickle: The (Formerly) Anonymous Prank Club of Fountain Point Middle School and M3: Sir John Hargrave’s Mischief Maker’s Manual by John Hargrave.

Today, I bring to you a specific picture book prank so light and airy and sweet that it can hardly be called “prank”.  It’s the kind of thing you might expect from the film Amelie or Color Me Katie.  It’s from last year and called More Bookish Prank Fun.  And to give you a hint of which picture book it references I shall leave you with just a single photograph.

Happy April Fool’s!

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The popular Very Short Introductions series is due to publish the latest in their ever increasing list of titles. Root Vegetables: A Very Short Introduction is to be written by Professor John Onions and publish in October this year.

Have you ever wondered why root vegetables are as popular as they are today? The Very Short Introduction will take the reader through a history of planting, growing, and eating them as well as delving into the economic and social aspects of this humble food.

The demand from the public for a short introduction to this subject was so high that it was decided a VSI to root vegetables must be commissioned. Andrea Keegan, series editor, explains “The interest in root vegetables cannot be underestimated. As well as the obvious health benefits of root vegetables, there is interest in their history and their provenance. Taking a global look at the many varieties of root vegetable, this Very Short Introduction will explore all aspects of this fascinating subject, including the relationship of the root vegetable to the leaf vegetable, the sea vegetable, bulbs and stems.”

The title will sit along other essential subjects such as Globalization, Microeconomics, Physical Chemistry, and English Literature.

April Fools! We hope we haven’t disappointed you too much. Although Root Vegetables: A Very Short Introduction is just a bit of April foolery, there are many other topics covered in the Very Short Introductions series.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday, subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS, and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

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Image credits: (1) Root z05 pastinaken by Zyance CC-BY-SA-2.5 via Wikimedia Commons (2) CarrotDiversityLg. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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By Daniel Parker

Be honest: did you once believe that spaghetti could grow on trees? That cats needed headphones? Or that the moon was made of cheese? Actually, don’t worry about that last one; I’m still sure that’s true. However embarrassingly you may have been hoodwinked on April Fool’s Day in the past, it is incredibly unlikely that you’ll have ever been swindled by French confidence trickster Georges Pierre des Clozets, who represented a completely fictional secret Alchemy society called ‘The Asterism’. That dubious honour fell to Robert Boyle, philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, who was duped in the latter part of the 17th century.

Between 1677 and 1678 Robert Boyle became the victim of a progressive French confidence trickster from Caen called Pierre, who claimed to be the agent of a secret international society of alchemists known mysteriously as ‘The Asterism’. The leader of The Asterism was described as the ‘Patriarch of Antioch’, resident in Constantinople. Pierre claimed to be able to work as an intermediary between Robert Boyle and the head of this exclusive society, Georges du Mesnillet, who Pierre referred to as the Patriarch of Antioch. The Asterism was, allegedly, a society comprised of the leading alchemists from around the world, a society that held the secrets to the riddles that had notoriously plagued Robert Boyle throughout his career. Pierre promised that Boyle would be made a member of The Asterism and, therefore, be privy to these alchemical secrets if he followed his orders.

There were a few problems with this. Firstly, The Asterism was an entirely fictional society made up by Pierre. Secondly, Georges du Mesnillet was not the Patriarch of Antioch (nor was there ever a French Patriarch of Antioch). Georges du Mesnillet was just an old acquaintance of Pierre’s. And thirdly, many of the alchemical secrets Pierre promised to impart were chemically impossible. Of course, Robert Boyle wasn’t to know any of this. Pierre expertly played on Robert Boyle’s obsessive fascination with alchemy, and toyed with Boyle’s perception of what was plausible and, more importantly, what was implausible. At one point during their correspondence, Pierre even managed to convince Boyle that one of the Chinese members of the society based in France had grown a fully formed homunculus in a jar.

So how did Pierre manage to successfully dupe the otherwise incredibly intelligent Robert Boyle?

As well as making a good personal impression on Boyle when the two met in early 1677 – Pierre is alluded to as the ‘illustrious stranger’ and ‘foreign virtuoso’ in Boyle’s An Historical Account of a Degradation of Gold by an Anti-Elixir – the French conman manipulated leading European periodicals to corroborate his fanciful tale. For instance, the stories Pierre told Boyle, such as the Patriarch of Antioch working towards the “reunification of the Greek and Latin Churches”, were backed up in France’s Mercure Galant and Holland’s Haerlemse Courant. The latter was published by Haarlem printer Abraham Casteleyn and it had an excellent reputation for reliability, and for acquiring sensitive international information ahead of its rivals. We also know that Robert Boyle read this publication during the years that Pierre fed ‘information’ to the publishers, and that Boyle was an irenic Christian, so these stories would have appealed to him and helped him believe the lies Pierre was telling him. The artifice of Pierre was such that he made Boyle trust him implicitly.

In early 1678 Robert Boyle was promised by Pierre that a triple-locked chest containing the alchemical secrets of The Asterism would be delivered to him as his membership had been approved by the (pseudo) Patriarch of Antioch. It was at this point that Pierre’s letters to Boyle started to dry up. Pierre’s silence was only punctuated by his bizarre excuse that the delays were due to a freak canon accident that had resulted in him breaking his lower jaw bone and losing part of his forehead. Needless to say, this triggered Boyle’s long overdue scepticism, and soon he found out the embarrassing nature of his correspondence with Pierre and the fictional society of The Asterism.

This embarrassing episode did not just impact on Robert Boyle’s pride, but his bank balance too. Pierre, and the fictional Patriarch of Antioch, swindled Robert Boyle to the tune of several hundred pounds worth of gifts. Amongst many other things, here are a few items Robert Boyle sent Pierre, on the ‘request’ of the Patriarch of Antioch: a telescope, assay balances, a globe, one hundred glass vials, jackets of fine fabric, eight rods of gold-coloured moiré, and a chiming clock over three feet tall. The only gift that we can be sure Boyle received in return, based on the correspondence between them, was a basket of fruits and cheeses. I think it’s fairly obvious who came out on top of that exchange.

Pierre used the gifts and money he had received from Robert Boyle, and numerous other victims throughout the 1670’s, to purchase an extravagant estate in Bretteville in the spring of 1680. While building and planting on the site, Pierre became ill with inflammation of the lung and died in May 1680. His family inherited the estate and the missive that announced his death summed up his mysterious existence perfectly: “Such was the end of this man, whose character had been so little known, and after his death we know even less than when he was alive”.

This article was written by Daniel Parker, Publicity Assistant at OUP, with the help and guidance of the Electronic Enlightenment team. Electronic Enlightenment currently has 13 letters from Georges Pierre Des Clozets to Robert Boyle written in French, along with their English translations. Electronic Enlightenment is a scholarly research project of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and is available exclusively from Oxford University Press. It is the most wide-ranging online collection of edited correspondence of the early modern period, linking people across Europe, the Americas, and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century.

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Image credit: Robert Boyle by Johann Kerseboom via Wikimedia Commons.

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Oh me, oh my, where does the time go?  Here we are, it’s Monday yet again, and I’m running about like a chicken with my head cut off.  This Friday I head off to Barcelona for a full week (weep for me), then back I come to promote my picture book (Giant Dance Party, or haven’t I mentioned it before?), but not before I’ve finished the promotional videos and my very first website.  *pant pant pant*

With that in mind, let’s get through these mighty quick.  Not that they don’t all deserve time and attention.  And tender loving care.  Mwah!  Big kisses all around!  And yes, I did consider doing an April Fool’s post today but thought better of it.  If you’d like to see some of the greatest April Fool’s posts of the children’s literary world, however, please be so good as to head over to Collecting Children’s Books and read the ones that Peter Sieruta came up with. There was 2012′s post (“Selznick syndrome” is just shy of brilliant),  2011′s Charlie Sheen Lands Children’s Book Deal (still feels real), 2009′s Graveyard Book to Be Stripped of Newbery, and his 2008 Ramona piece de resistance.  This is the first year he won’t have one up.  Miss you, Peter.

• So I had a crazy idea for a Children’s Literary Salon panel at NYPL.  Heck, I didn’t even know if anyone would show up, but I invited four different children’s librarians from four very different alternative children’s libraries.  Don’t know what an alternative children’s library is?  Then read this SLJ write-up NYPL Panelists Explore Alternatives to Traditional Librarianship.  The happy ending is that lots of people attended and the conversation was scintillating.  And timely.  A nice combination.

• Another good combination?  Me and my husband.  And it seems the resident husband recently wrote a blog piece that could be of use to you writer types out there.  How To Write Every Day, Conclusion: Is Your Goal to Keep Writing or Stop Writing? should give you enough fodder to chew on for the next year or so.  Then I’ll tell you about another one of his posts.  Trust me when I say they’re all this good.

• Did your stomach lurch a little when you found out that Amazon bought Goodreads?  Well, how much should you care?  Dan Blank has some answers.  In Short: Don’t you worry ’bout nothing (he says it nicer than that).

• A contact recently mentioned that they would like to give a little attention to the children’s book art auction at Book Expo, a yearly event that actually isn’t particularly well known.  Said they (take note!):

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is an organization that fights book censorship. We mostly work with booksellers, however, in Our Kids Right To Read Project, we advocate for kids when people try to ban books in libraries or classrooms.  Our position is that parents have the right to decide what their own children read but they do not have the right to decide for others.  Proceeds from the auction will go to our programming. Our website is www.abffe.org and for the auction we have set up a separate page where people can buy tickets and artists can donate art. It is: http://abffesilentauction.wordpress.com/.

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by Mr. Polyomnous flickr.com

On April Fool's Day, someone will probably play a joke on you--funny or not. It always seems as if the joke is funnier for the person planning it than for the recipient. But let's hope that if you're the "victim" of a joke today, it has nothing to do with your writing career. Simply because . . . there should be no fooling when it comes to your writing.

Do you take your career seriously? Whether you write every day to pay bills or after your day job at night or on the weekends only, you are a writer. Yes, that's right. It's not a hobby. It's a passion. Right? The words beg to be released from your soul, and that is no laughing matter.

What can you do so that you take your writing more seriously? (And in turn, so will your friends, family, and even your mother.)

Join a critique group! As soon as you write a page and realize that someone is going to read it and offer you feedback, you're going to be more serious about it. That doesn't mean that everything you write--like that poem about the jerk who stood you up last year--has to be presented to your critique group. But let's say your goal is to write one short story a month or finish your novel this year. First tell your critique group your goal (other writers are the best about bothering you to complete these goals), and then give them the opportunity to see your progress and offer constructive feedback.

Put it on your social media profile. Put "it"? What do I mean by "it"? The fact that you are a writer. Put it in your Facebook profile--"I am a writer." Send out a tweet that says, "I want to announce that I am writing a novel." On your LinkedIn profile, list one of your jobs as a writer--and if you've written and been published, put a link to that piece or ask the editor for a recommendation. You get what I mean. (Warning: once you do this, people who have NO CLUE about how difficult it is to be a writer will ask, "Are you still writing books?" Hold off on the urge to type what you really want to say, and instead simply answer, "Yes! :)" Don't forget the smiley face.)

Write. Yes, writing really is the key to stop fooling around with your career. I know many people in my monthly writing group (where we meet and have speakers, discuss writing trends, etc) that aren't actually writing. They dabble here or there, but they spend more time talking about writing and reading about writing and even blogging about writing (although I know--your blog is important and it is writing) than working on their projects. I am sure I am NOT talking about you, so no worries. But if there is the slightest chance that you are reading this and thinking: Oh, she caught me, just close the browser window, open up Microsoft Word, and type a page of your work-in-progress.

And finally, if you want to be published, you do have to submit your work--no fooling. But we'll save that for another day.

Happy April Fool's Day! Hope you have a chance to smile, laugh, and WRITE today.

Post by Margo L. Dill; Margo blogs about children's and YA books and how to use them at margodill.com/blog/. She also teaches online classes for the WOW! classroom. And she is working on a YA novel and an essay about giving birth at we

2 Comments on No Fooling Around With Your Writing, last added: 4/2/2012

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Joyce Lansky said, on 4/1/2012 8:44:00 PM

Write is right. I spend too much time blogging and not enough time on my novels. Thanks for the visit.

Catch My Words
http://joycelansky.blogspot.com/

Margo Dill said, on 4/2/2012 5:36:00 PM

Joyce, it is so easy to do. Blogging is fun and instant. Novels take hard work and sometimes we don't get feedback for YEARS. But the first step is always admitting the problem. (laughs) Thanks for your comment. :)

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