Forum members in literature

[Cudzoziemiec]

My sister-in-law has a few English books on her shelves, so I picked one up at random and started to read. Earthy Possessions by Anne Tyler. I'd never heard of her, but according to the blurb she was nominated "greatest living novelist writing in English" by Roddy Doyle and Nick Hornby in 1994 and has won a Pulitzer prize.

So, first page, second paragraph, first sentence, I read:

Time was when I knew everybody in Clarion, but then they opened the lipstick factory and strangers started moving in.

Does anyone have any other examples of forum members appearing in literature, even if, as in this case, they are towns not people?

[tiermat]

My forum name appears in mesopotamian mythology, does that count (thinking about it, it probably doesn't as theirs was an oral, rather than a written one)...

[clarion]

ISTR a Malvolio somewhere...

[bikenerd]

Does anyone have any other examples of forum members appearing in literature, even if, as in this case, they are towns not people?

I see what you're doing, there.  I know where your forum name comes from!

[Cudzoziemiec]

My forum name appears in mesopotamian mythology, does that count (thinking about it, it probably doesn't as theirs was an oral, rather than a written one)...

Oh, I think that counts too.

Does anyone have any other examples of forum members appearing in literature, even if, as in this case, they are towns not people?

I see what you're doing, there.  I know where your forum name comes from!

Not what I was thinking of, actually, but a fair point!

[tiermat]

TIAMAT : The deity from Mesopotamian Mythology

The mis-spelling is mine

[Quisling]

I'm sure I make various appearances, though these stop abrubtly in 1945

[Karla]

I've got a whole book written about me.

[Ray 6701]

A pop up book about me 
Fungus the Bogeyman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Charlotte]

I have my own web, dahlink...

[rogerzilla]

I was the cabin boy in the apocryphal list of Captain Pugwash characters.

[eck]

There's a Wee Eck in Oor Wullie   
Does that count as literature? 

[Wobbly John]

I have my own web, dahlink...

...and  book.

[citoyen]

Yeah, I've had a book about beer published - with my actual real name on the cover and everyfink.

Hardly what you'd call "literature", though - it was a shitty commissioned hack job for which I got a flat fee* and lots of grief, and had very little control over the content.

d.

*ie no "royalties", which is a real shame considering it's been sold all over the world and has probably made the publisher loads of money. 

[Pancho]

ISTR a Malvolio somewhere...

I must be blind. I'd never made the connection. It must have been MV's use of vole avatar that led my thinking down the wrong track.

But Malvolio? Really?

[spindrift]

Geoffrey Aggeler writes:

 'Spindrift's pursuit of Sheila becomes. . . a search for love, or more precisely the meaning of love, and this is one of the many respects in which it parallels the quest of Leopold Bloom through Dublin. . . The Doctor is Sick can be seen as Burgess's own treatment of the major themes of Ulysses , for example the extent to which Spindrift's descent from disembodied philology into the world of tangible reality is like the progress of Stephen Dedalus from a world of words, in which he is an acknowledged master, to the world of Leopold Bloom.

Of times and places

[border-rider]

But Malvolio? Really?

Well...I dunno.  Mal Volio is a construct.  He's not really very similar to the person behind the keyboard in mannerisms or approach even if he shares his worldview. Not the same as the Shakespearian character, either, of course, but with a slightly ironic nod in that direction.

It was also a tongue-in-cheek nod at the Dr Who "Bad Wolf" thing, which was current when he was first created.  MV is much more a slightly badly-behaved rodent than the Malvolio of Shakespeare (I hope). 

[Deborah]

I appear in the Bible.

[Sergeant Pluck]

"Is it about a bicycle?" he asked.

His expression when I encountered it was unexpectedly reassuring. His face was gross and far from beautiful but he had modified and assembled his various unpleasant features in some skilful way so that they expressed to me good nature, politeness and infinite patience. In the front of his peaked official cap was an important-looking badge and over it in golden letters was the word SERGEANT. It was Sergeant Pluck himself.

"No," I answered, stretching forth my hand to lean with it against the counter. The Sergeant looked at me incredulously.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Certain."

"Not about a motor-cycle?"

"No."

"One with overhead valves and a dynamo for light? Or with racing handle-bars?"

"No."

"In that circumstantial eventuality there can be no question of a motor-bicycle," he said...

...He sat down by the turf fire and began jawing his knuckles and giving me sharp glances from under his bushy brows. If I had horns upon my head or a tail behind me he could not have looked at me with more interest. I was unwilling to give any lead to the direction of the talk and there was complete silence for five minutes. Then his expression eased a bit and he spoke to me again.

"What is your pronoun?" he inquired.

"I have no pronoun," I answered, hoping I knew his meaning.

"What is your cog?"

"My cog?"

"Your surnoun?"

"I have not got that either."

And so forth... the bicycle-obsessed Sgt Pluck in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman.

[oncemore]

Once more unto the beach....must have been misquoted SOMEwhere.

[mr endon]

ahem...

[Blade]

I appear in various comic books,vampire killer films and a film version of 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'.

[αdαmsκι]

Wowbagger.

[andygates]

Good lord.

I think I'm free of references...

[Wowbagger]

Good lord.

I think I'm free of references...

But you are in film.

Andy Gates