A Final Note From Professor Horton J. Higglediggle

Unnerved and alarmed by my shocking failure to recognize the grossly forged nature of the Phil Collins "memoir" which I so eagerly devoured and so frequently quoted over the course of several years, I began to wonder (and fear): could it be at all possible that I'd ... made the same mistake twice?

Loyal readers may recall that, only a short while after "discovering" the fraudulent (if highly amusing) Collins work, I came across an equally strange text, Father Figure: The Socio-Political Implications of George Michael in the Post-Modern Landscape, which, unlike the bogus autobiography, was purportedly written not by the artist himself, but by an academic scholar of significant international renown: Professor Horton J. Higglediggle.

But now I began to wonder. Allegedly an instructor at the University of New South-Southwest Wales, perhaps there was something amiss with this imposing-sounding credential. Let us not forget, of course, that Professor Harold Hill never did in fact attend Gary Conservatory and was not, despite his many claims, a member of the Gold Medal class of 1905. Alas, after a quick Google search, a cold sweat enveloped my palms once again.

There is no Australian state known as New South-Southwest Wales.

What had I done?

Come on, like I know the names of Australian states? Hell, I thought they were called provinces, you know, like in Canada. Give this Yank a break. But mainly, I felt that a scholarly groundbreaking text such as Higglediggle's was too masterful to fake, too insightful to fabricate - as if some random blogger who'd spent a year in grad school could have imitated language so complex, theories so heady. Preposterous!

Then it dawned on me: at various times, hadn't I been personally corresponding with Professor Higglediggle - or if not Professor Higglediggle, then at least someone claiming to be Professor Higglediggle?  And so, it was time to compose yet another letter. One evening last month, at approximately 2:00am, bottle of Absolut Vodka on my desk (presumably from Russia, but perhaps even that was a lie?), I wrote to this reclusive pseudo-Aussie once more, in a tone arguably a touch too nasty and accusatory for the occasion, but emotions were running high. A week later, I received the following reply:

Your inquiries as to the nature of my identity, though possibly not intended as such, do raise salient points about the issue of authorial authenticity in the post-textual media landscape. For if the means of publication are, for lack of a better term, democratized, and if identities can be formed and dissolved without any sense of finite legitimacy, then would there be, in any experientially or ontologically valid meaning of the term, a concrete categorical difference between the work of Professor Higglediggle and, say, an online imposter purporting to be Professor Higglediggle? In other words, if the difference between the "imposter" Higglediggle and the "real" Higglediggle cannot be established, then wouldn't the "imposter" Higglediggle become just as real as the "real" Higglediggle, in the same sense that "misquoted" classic film lines (ex: "Play it again, Sam"; "We don't need no stinking badges") have eventually, if unintentionally, risen to the status of the "real" quotation? In merely asking the question, "Who is Professor Higglediggle?" aren't we elevating the primacy of the "original" Higglediggle to an arbitrary status it may not ultimately merit?