Lone Voices

Since the nineteenth century a number of writers have questioned whether William Shakespeare actually wrote the works attributed to him, for one reason or another finding it hard to believe that the humble, practical, Stratford man could have authored plays and poems of such towering genius. (As is well known, all great works are created by university-educated, upper-class types).

My interest in the man who called himself Frank Nimrod began when I chanced on an item listed in an online catalogue, a book called Solved Riddles: Elementary Mass, Material Mass, Momentum-Energy-Continuity. Seeing that it was self-published, I ordered it immediately: self-published science books with strange titles I find irresistible. I didn't realise it would start me on a new mission: to collect the works of one of the oddest authors I've encountered.

Solved Riddles

(The Author, San Francisco, 1964. Stapled loose sheets. 68pp.)

Conspiracies. They are everywhere, you know. Equally ubiquitous it would seem are books exposing their dastardly existence. How any self-respecting conspirator expects to get away with it, when there are so many keen observers of their activities, it is hard to explain. Unless of course it is all a conspiracy to distract us from the real truth...

This rather dull-looking paperback book is actually a little gem of oddball literature, with many delights lurking between its covers. It was intended by Johnson that it should promote fasting as a spiritual discipline, with benefits both to body and soul, but he made his case in such an unusual way that it seems hard to believe he won many converts.