I don't remember Les Faux-Monneyers being about art forgery, unless I missed that part, or unless you think that the novel itself is a forged novel about itself.
My assumption is that it works out relevantly in the end.
"The title describes a counterfeiting ring which uses children, like something from Dickens's "Oliver Twist", to pass off gold-plated glass disks for coins."
...from an Amazon review.
"'The Counterfeiters' is a novel presumably written by one of its characters, Edouard, who is planning to write a novel titled 'The Counterfeiters,' but is struggling with a case of writer's block. What seems to give him trouble is that the complexity of his experience keeps defying his attempts to apply a scheme of interpretation to it, and a sense of personal crisis which makes it difficult for him to maintain his objectivity as an artist. As a read, though, it isn't half as strange and experimental as that might make it sound"
Yes it is. One of my favourites, had one of my pleasant breakdowns studying this book.
I found The Flanders Panel ultimately unsatisfying, but I always suspected it was because I didn't know enough about music or chess. Also I read it a long time ago. There's also the reliable From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil e. Frankweiler., which might not be quite your speed.
There may be actual forgery involved in Melville's Confidence Man; I've only made it about halfway and probably need to start over.
Oh, there's Holder of the World, and while it's a rollicking and interesting ride, it doesn't all come back to the starting point of the painting.
Though its pertinence to both art and forgery are perhaps superficial, Donald Barthelme's "Engineer-Private Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft between Milbertshofen and Cambrai, March 1916" from 40 Stories, is not to be missed. There are Secret Police in it.
The book I plan to pitch concerns art theft (tho it's not a novel). What is it you want to steal, Ben?
Shhhh, Armsmasher. He can't forge your manuscript if you keep telling everyone about it.
Lev Nussimbaum ("The Orientalist") wrote books under a series of pseudonyms which came along with fake life stories. Some of the books were partly autobiographical. He wasn't forging some other author's works, he was forging an author and then writing books for him.
Peter Ackroyd's Chatterton is good, if that sort of thing counts as "art" for your purposes.
I believe the classic (though neglected) work in the genre is The DaVinci Code.
The Revenge for Love by Wyndham Lewis.
The Marble Faun? The Gaddis and the Davies are the obvious ones I can think of, although I can think of a fair amount of non-fiction. (And Welles' F for Fake if we're not restricted to novels.)
OT: Marcotte resigned from the Edwards campaign.
How odd. I assumed that -- having not gone at once -- she'd "resign" a few months from now, when everyone normal had forgotten this business, and when she could kind-of-plausibly claim to be resigning for unrelated reasons. Why do it now?
"Headlong" by Michael Frayn (he of "Copenhagen" fame) is excellent.
20: "To spend more time with her family" seems to be the established pretense. Very strange timing.
Iain Pears has an entire series on art theft, and some involve forgery.
"Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote"
I found The Flanders Panel ultimately unsatisfying, but I always suspected it was because I didn't know enough about music or chess.
For other possible reasons, see Jackmormon on Perez-Reverte.
Though 24 and 27 are verbally identical, the second is almost infinitely richer.
Ewen Montagu, "The Man Who Never Was", is actually true (see Operation MINCEMEAT) and a very interesting story of detailed forgery. "The Dumas Club" has bits about book-fakery.
Several of the "Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators" book series (like the Hardy Boys, but better) for kids deal with art theft and/or forgery.
Those were some of my favorite books when I was a kid. I remember "The Secret of the Stuttering Parrot" being about art theft or forgery.
William Hallahan's The Ross Forgery is one of the cleverest books about literary forgery I've ever read.
Cigarettes, by Harry Mathews!
I have actually read Cigarettes, without getting this impression. (I mean—there's a forgery of that one painting, I know that.)
There's a lovely Kipling short story, "Dayspring Mishandled", about a Chaucer forgery. And if you want to get into mystery novels, there's probably a dozen Michael Innes novels, although I can't remember titles.
Yes--"deals with" in the sense that a forgery plays a significant role in the plot. Did you have a different sense in mind?
If literary forgeries are in the mix, the science fiction writer Joe Hadelman's The Hemingway Hoax is about an attempt to recreate the Paris manuscripts.
If you're interested in the actual techniques of forging, Eric Hebborn's "The Art-Forger's Handbook" is fairly detailed, although his style is twee and annoying.
Does disguise/mistaken identity fall under the realm of counterfeiting in general, or are we just limited to stories about art, about forging art? Because there's lots of stories about disguises and passing, which could be defined as a sort of "self-forgery." (Sarrasine?)
Re: 6, The Confidence Man has numerous forgeries, but they're characters passing for characters they're not on the one hand, and on the meta hand, text passing for characters. (The importance of the meta hand in CM should not be downplayed.) It would be a fine novel for forged art, but I don't remember it being a significant part of the novel. It seems to me there's got to be at least one good story by Melville in the forgery genre.
The Portrait of a Lady has a different sort of character forgery in the form of Gilbert Osmond. His is probably more akin to forged art, in the sense that Osmond's public character is a studied one, finely drawn for effect, but entirely false in every other way.
Ahem. "they're characters passing for characters. They're not on the one hand..."
I'm surprised "The Maltese Falcon" hasn't been mentioned.
I'm specifically interested in art and forgery. I was disappointed in The Unknown Masterpiece, I have to admit, but that was mostly because I had a pretty specific expectation as to what it would be about.
Lawrence Block writes mystery novels that have often featured art forgery. I'm think of one series in particular, which has a cat-burglar/bookstore-owner as a main character, but I'm not coming up with any names. (It took me about half an hour to come up with the author's name.)
One of the short-story-esque sections of David Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten, concerns art forgery.
43: Oh, the character's Bernie Rhodenbarr -- The Burglar Who Painted Like Mondrian is one.
If you're interested in the actual techniques of forging, Eric Hebborn's "The Art-Forger's Handbook" is fairly detailed, although his style is twee and annoying.
Michael Crichton's surprisingly excellent "The Great Train Robbery" contains some good information about how to forge keys, although not art. It may all be lies, though.
There's an early Ken Follet thriller called The Modigliani Scandal. Not great, but all about art forgers. Elizabeth Peters has a series of mysteries (the Vicky Bliss series) about art theft, but forgery plays a role in several, I think. (My memories are a bit foggy - I read these as a teenager). Also Iain Pears' books are enjoyable.
Incognito is a good movie about Art forgery, with details about provenance, pigments, aging...the world of art forgers..."I don't do Rembrandts, too many experts"...why an painter can feel so failed so as to turn to forgery. Action/adventure, in places of course.
Jason Patric, and Irene Jacob, the Yummy from Red
It's nonfiction and about antiquities, so probably not what you're looking for, but Mysteries of the Snake Goddess is quite good.
This might not exactly what you have in mind, but Thomas Bernhard's Old Masters: A Comedy apparently--I haven't read it yet--has a few tirades in which one of the main characters calls paintings in a museum forgeries.
Recordings of this and last week's shows are up, bitches.
One of my friends wrote about counterfeiting in, I think, Measure for Measure. One of those Shakespeare comedies that never gets performed, with a plotline that includes a bunch of guys dressing up as women to enter some sort of seraglio? John Guil/lory was interested in this sort of thing.
(Just in case this is for a paper or something.)
No, I was thinking about art and the status of forgeries and how one considers the activity of forgers, creativity, etc.. The Recognitions is pretty interesting in that regard, as is (I've never read the whole thing but am told) What's Bred in the Bone. So, you know.
How do you only read part of What's Bred in the Bone? It's both engaging and short.
More books will likely come to me with time, but Patricia Highsmith's second Ripley novel (I think it's Ripley's Game) centers on a forgery scam.
Kiril Bonfiglioli's Charlie Mordechai novels are about a felonious art dealer, I think he includes forgery on his rap sheet, at least in the first, and best, novel.
Hugh Kenner's The Counterfeiters: An Historical Comedy deserves to be thrown in there somewhere, too.
A little less high-brow, Andi Watson's Geisha is about a robot who becomes a forger in part to get vengeance on all the critics who complained that her work lacked warmth and human feeling.
Kiril Bonfiglioli
I read the first one of those! I don't remember the plot so much as I remember that wonderfully acid style.
53: The book I mentioned in 49 has some interesting stuff about the creativity involved in forging and the status of forgeries as art. It's also about Crete.
In a similar vein to Teo's comment, the book I mentioned in 37 has a bunch of strange self-justification and artistic oneupsmanship. Hebborn's forgeries are really quite good.
There's no real forgery in the Counterfeiters, except in that the work itself is revealed to be fake--or all novels are revealed to be fake--and somehow Gide makes you care about the melodramatic twist ending even though the very point of the twist is that it is a fake, engineered by a fake. Anyway, good show, Gide.
There's a bastard in it, so it becomes relevant in that way.
The French writer Georges Perec wrote "A Gallery Portrait" a short story about forged art. It is available in translation in his collection "Three."