Ethan Coen's Fake Author Bio as Nudist

by Peter Clarke

The Coen brothers are two of the greatest screenwriters of all time. Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading… Nearly everything they touch turns to dark-comedy gold.

But Ethan Coen is isn’t just a brilliant screenwriter, it turns out he’s also a hell of a short story writer. His 1998 collection, “Gates of Eden,” is often just as entertaining as his movies—if that could even be possible. His superpower as a writer is creating incredibly strong characters that come alive on the page (usually gangsters or detectives).

At the end of his book, I expected to find the typical author bio. Instead, in the “About the Author” section, there was one final fictional character. I always love it when authors have fun with their own bio, although it can seem forced and lame. In Coen’s case, I was thrown off by the serious tone of the bio, and only halfway through realized it was a joke. And it struck me as hilarious.

Not to be confused with the famous screenwriter, here’s Coen’s full bio as an “accomplished nudist”:

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ethan Coen is the Samuel Gelbfisz Professor of English as a Second Language at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of Homeward Plods: Images of the Cowswain in 18th Century Verse, and For Art's Sake: Schopenhauer's Esthetics. he is married to the Percussionist Grace Buller-George, whose husband Sir Hugh Ayrehead-Maybe of the Austin-Davies Ayrehead-Maybesis Chief Disciplinarian of the Glamorgan Male Choir. They have two children, Alun and Gwynff, as does he. Coen is an accomplished nudist and is the author of a study of Scott's Kenilworth which was universally ignored, as well as of three volumes of poetry or, if any publisher should prefer, one big one.

Of course, there is a real bio on the back sleeve of the book:

Pataphysics and Divergent Thinking

by Peter Clarke

At face value, pataphysics, defined as an extension of metaphysics, is pure nonsense. What could it mean for something to be beyond metaphysics? No matter how hard you try to wrap your mind around it, you won’t find any significant meaning at the heart of this conception.

But you do find a wide-open canvas for unhinged ideas and associations. This is “science” with no wrong answers, only some that are funnier or cleverer than others. Put another way, this pataphysical canvas is a place to fearlessly engage in divergent thinking.

Divergent thinking is the heart and soul of creativity. When psychologists measure creativity, they do so by testing one’s ability to think divergently. In his book “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell gives a classic example of a divergent thinking test. Consider the prompt: “How many uses can you think of for a brink.” One test-taker with an unusually high IQ responded, “Building things, throwing.” Despite this person’s intelligence, this answer is a hard fail. Another test-taker who excelled at divergent thinking responded, “To use in smash-and-grab raids. To. Help hold a house together. To use in a game of Russian roulette if you want to keep fit at the same time (bricks at ten paces, run and throw — no evasive action allowed). To hold the eiderdown on a bed tie a brick at each corner. As a breaker of empty Coca-Cola bottles.”

Gladwell contends that divergent thinking is often more important than IQ for finding success in the world. This is why, he says, people who win the Nobel Prize don’t all come from Harvard, but are frequently from schools with far less exclusive admissions standards.

How do you get better at divergent thinking? One way is to spend time beyond the metaphysical realm, on the pataphysical canvas. If you’re faced with a question like, “What is a brick used for?” step outside your usual experience. Abandon your typical notion of what might be “logical.” Go off the deep end. Peek over the cliff’s edge. Dive off the rocker. Find something random, reach out for something tangential to that, and then turn it upside down.

What is a brick used for? Among other things: Holding open the nozzle to the floodgates of your imagination.

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This essay is a selection from “Pataphysics: A Secret Weapon for Creativity” published in Blank Page.