National Book Award-winning writer Richard Powers has been revealed as a ghost writer of books “authored” by Tom Clancy and James Patterson.

“I’m not proud of what I did, but we needed a new porch,” said Powers in a rare interview. “Ever wonder why Dave Wallace picked The Hunt for Red October as one of his top ten books? Well, now you have your answer.”

Powers’ ghost writing career started off quietly under Tom Clancy. Word got around. Powers confessed that he had been approached by James Patterson, because Patterson was writing so many books that he had exhausted his rolodex of contacts.

“It was easy money,” said Powers. “I could put these books together over a weekend, because there wasn’t any neuroscience or VR environments involved. Just bad writing. In fact, writing bad sentences was the hardest part of the job.”

Scholars, sifting through the remainder of philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s papers, have located an essay in which Baudrillard declares:

The end of comics is, alas, also the end of the dustbins of comics. To this, we must add the Jim Davis comic, Garfield, which is not so much a comic as it is an ideology. Garfield is not an ideology that we can accept. It does not exist in the newspapers. It does not exist in our heads, hearts, and stomachs. We must look into the column inches occupied by Garfield and understand that it is not there.

It is unknown whether Baudrillard applied this criteria to all newspaper comics, but scholars are now sifting through notes Baudrillard had on The Family Circus, Marmaduke and Hagar the Horrible, all dismissed as (loosely translated from the French) “sucky comics.” But the general consensus so far is that Garfield, more than any other comic, spawned a deep animosity within Baudrillard.

[UPDATE: In case it wasn’t clear, this post, as was everything else posted on April 1, 2007, was a false report. I have appended this note because humorless representatives of Mr. Scorsese have contacted me.]

Due to a last-minute scheduling conflict, director Sam Mendes has been replaced by director Martin Scorsese for the upcoming film adaptation of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are still attached.

“I’m the only guy who can direct Leo,” said Scorsese, who is now working on a new script with Goodfellas screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi. “We’re going to turn this into an unforgettable movie.”

Scorsese and Pileggi plan big things for this star-studded adaption, including a “re-imagining” of the book’s opening community theater scene, which will now end in a violent bloodbath, leaving the Wheelers the only people standing, as well as 40 minutes of two-lane highway footage interspersed throughout the film. The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” will once again be used to enhance pivotal dramatic moments.

After a protracted search, Silvia Garmon, a 23-year-old former grad student, has been discovered to be the only person in the United States to have finished reading Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day. Garmon, who did not see the sun for almost four months, was able to complete Pynchon’s book through sixteen hour reading days and eventually became so immersed in legitimately finishing the book that she dropped out of grad school to complete the task.

Since completing the book, Garmon has been unable to read another book, having suffered from PTPS (Post-Traumatic Pynchon Syndrome), and is not much of a conversationalist. She has managed to respond to any questions that relate to the Chicago World’s Fair, Tesla coils and higher mathematics.

Today, Haruki Murakami’s translator announced that Mr. Murakami would win every single literary award in 2007 and that there was nothing that anybody could do about it.

“The Kiriyama Prize was just the beginning,” said Alfred Birnbaum, one of his long-time translators, speaking on behalf of Murakami. “We’re going to take the Booker, the Orange Broadband Prize, the National Book Award. It doesn’t matter if Murakami was nominated or eligible or not.”

Asked what personal stake he had in stumping for Murakami or voicing such extraordinary Howard Dean-like excitement, Mr. Birnbaum revealed, “Those bastards Gabriel and Rubin are hogging the work.” So Mr. Birnbuam’s claim is to be taken lightly.