'Goodbye, Columbus': Philip Roth’s 'official Twitter page' a hoax by Italian journalist

Get short URL

Published time: December 27, 2012 15:17
Edited time: December 27, 2012 20:18

The creator of fake Twitter pages for a number of world leaders including Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Syria’s President Assad has set up another fake account, this time of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Philip Roth.

­Tommasso Debenedetti has become notorious for announcing the alleged deaths of Fidel Castro and Pedro Almodóvar. Earlier this year he told the Guardian that "Twitter works well for deaths".

This time Debenedetti has opened a fake account for the man behind “American Pastoral”, Roth.

One of the towering American writers of the 20th Century recently announced “Nemesis” was his last novel, and an army of his fans were happy when the news of Roth’s “official Twitter page” spread across the Internet.

“I join Twitter today. It’s easy …” the first message said.

Earlier this year the 79-year-old creator of “Portnoy’s Complaint” told French magazine Les Inrocks that he gave up writing fiction, describing the creative process as a “torture”. Roth mentioned he would keep himself busy learning to use an iPhone.

“No, that is not Mr. Roth posting on Twitter,” a press representative for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which publishes Mr. Roth’s books, stated in an e-mail to The New York Times.

“The real Philip Roth — yes, him — would have it known that he has NO Twitter account, and it is MOST unlikely he ever shall,” the author of Roth’s biography Blake Bailey later confirmed on his own Twitter account.

Tommasso Debenedetti has since posted his online “confession” saying that Roth’s account “is a hoax”.