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.

Disgraced editor and publisher Judith Regan announced this morning, “Contrary to recent reports, rumors of my career death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Regan is back in the saddle with FuQuBooks, a new press founded upon an ancient Sumerian principle that is said to have greatly influenced Cole Porter.

FuQu’s flagship title will be Protocols Misunderstood, an anthology in which several prominent writers will write about their closet anti-Semitism. Regan declined to name names, noting, “You’ll have to buy the book to find out!”

The book will revisit some of the tenets contained within the controversial book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, applying them to the O.J. Simpson trial, American Idol, and grilled cheese sandwiches — the latter, allegedly a considerable threat to the master race.

Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, has at long last decided to sue himself. In a lawsuit filed with the United States District Court, Mr. Brown named himself as plaintiff and defendant, and efforts were underway to establish Mr. Brown as the Judge trying the proceedings.

“I’m tired of being sued for plagiarism by third-rate writers,” said Brown. “As a third-rate writer myself, the time had come to conduct my honorable duty.’

Brown hoped that his lawsuit would set a precedent in which the only literary sources for The Da Vinci Code were, in fact, various notes and fiction that Brown had been working on: in other words, a quite conscious theft from Brown to Brown.

Sensing that two months of Jonathan Lethem touring around the nation was not enough, Doubleday has extended Mr. Lethem’s book tour to five years, hoping that this will increase sales of his latest novel, You Don’t Love Me Yet.

“We got the idea this weekend while watching a Gilligan’s Island marathon on Nick at Nite,” said Doubleday publicist Nadia Meringue. “We figured that if it worked for Bob Denver and Alan Hale, Jr., that it would likewise work for Lethem. We will not rest until their is a Lethem volume in every household’s library.”

Critics raised cautious eyebrows over this eleventh hour publicity move, fearing that Mr. Lethem might be overexposed and unable to write additional novels.

“Novels schmovels,” said Meringue. “We figure that if enough people can get a piece of Lethem in person, they will be compelled to buy any book with the words ‘Jonathan Lethem’ on it.”

To ensure that Lethem-mania goes as planned, Ms. Meringue has fitted Mr. Lethem with a medallion designed to hypnotize all audiences who come into contact with him.