Fredrik Colting, aka "John David California"

The Swedish publisher of the book 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, has admitted that he lied and that he, in fact, is the author of the book, and that he made up, and gave interviews as, and staged photographs of, a fake author he called John David California. This, after a report on The Smoking Gun (headlined “Hack Behind ‘Catcher’ Flap”) based on court filings in the lawsuit being brought by J. D. Salinger against the book. (See the earlier MobyLives report.) But Colting admitted his fraud after being confronted by The Smoking Gun, which also did additional detective work to uncover that Colting is an author “whose previous published works include The Macho Man’s (Bad) Joke Book, The Erotic A-Z, and a volume listing the 100 best heavy metal albums.”

Nonetheless, a story on Galleycat by Jason Boog reports that Colting and the publishing company he formed to publish the book, Windupbird, (apparently, a one-off of Colting’s larger publishing house, Nicotext ), as well as his American distributor, SCB Distributors, have hired leading book industry law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz to fight the suit from Salinger in federal court on Monday.

Meanwhile, support for the book seems to have vaporized in the UK. “The book was briefly available in the UK but is now listed as ‘out of stock’ on Amazon.co.uk,” notes a report on The Bookseller, which would seem to indicate that the British distributor of the book, Turnaround Books, is not as impressed by the character of Colting as his American distributor. The Bookseller report also fills in on the photos of the purported John David California that appeared in several publications: “That was actually my friend Gustav Roth,” explains Colting. “He’s an actor, so I said to him: ‘Go act’.”