"The people who believe in these lists are asleep. Anyone sitting up at three in the morning secretly has doubts."

Are you a day person or a night person? Ask Jean Shepherd, the infamous late-night '50s radio DJ who concocted an entire literary hoax in the form of a book called I, Libertine. Shepherd believed that Manhattan, and the world at large, depended almost entirely upon lists — like The New York Times Best Seller list. So, he asked his listeners to help him come up with the name of a title of a book that didn't exist, so that they all might visit bookstores the next day and ask for it and watch the confusion grow on the employees' faces. The ruse even started to reach cities overseas like Paris and Rome. It was the greatest book to never exist, until it suddenly did exist...

Theme music is credited to Wendy Marcini, Elvin Vanguard, and Jules Gaia.

Instagram: @literaryscandals

Selected bibliography:

• Excelsior, You Fathead!: The Art and Enigma of Jean Shepherd by Eugene B. Bergmann

• “The Man Behind the Brilliant Media Hoax of ‘I, Libertine,’” The Awl

• “An interview with Shepherd on the hoax from Long John Nebel’s radio show,” WFMU’s Beware of the Blog

• “Ballantine Books Makes Hoax Come True,” The Wall Street Journal