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French celebrity intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy is experiencing one of the most embarrassing moments of his career. In his latest book, he quotes a philosopher, known as Jean-Baptiste Botul. Turns out Botul is a hoax. Genevieve Oger has more from Paris.

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KATY CLARK:  I’m Katy Clark and this is The World.  The U.S. has celebrities.  France has celebrity intellectuals and one of its most famous has made a very embarrassing mistake.  In his latest book Bernard-Henri Levy quotes a philosopher named Jean-Baptiste Botul.  The problem is Botul never existed; he’s a fictional character.  And now the French are having a big laugh at Levy’s expense.  Genevieve Oger has more from Paris.

GENEVIEVE OGER:  Few philosophers have songs written about them.  But then again, Bernard-Henri Levy is in a class all his own.  The French intellectual known for his white shirts without a tie and his longish dark hair is a fixture in Paris media and literary circles.  Whether he’s on TV, in photo spreads, or at cocktail parties with his glamorous wife, it sometimes feels like Levy is everywhere.  This may explain some of the shadenfreude in France right now.  It began last week when Levy’s new book came out.  On page 122 Levy quotes an obscure philosopher, Jean-Baptiste Botul in his book, The Sexual Life of Emmanuel Kant.  The book, published in 1999, exists, but its author doesn’t.

FREDERIC PAGES:  I did not want to make a trap for Mr. Levy.  He fell in the trap by himself.

OGER: Frederic Pages invented Jean-Baptiste Botul with a group of friends in the 1990′s.  Pages, who has a doctorate in Philosophy, writes for a French satirical weekly.  He tells me in a café across from his office that he created Botul on a lark.

PAGES: It’s for fun, but also if you work on Jean-Paul Sartre or Aristotle you have a lot of specialists who come and say you are not right, it’s wrong, what you say.  But on the contrary, when you choose a fictional philosopher, you can work very quietly without being disturbed so we invented this fiction for that.

OGER: As the story goes, Botul lived from 1896 to 1947.  He never published anything during his lifetime, but his followers managed to pen four books in his name, from his speeches and his correspondence.  That’s all fiction.  But here’s the real part.  The Sexual Life of Emmanuel Kant, the book quoted by Levy, has sold 16,000 copies and has been translated into 12 languages.  Not bad for a fake philosopher.  The French media and public have pounced on Levy’s mistake.  They say its proof he’s all image and no substance.  We asked Levy for a comment, but he didn’t respond in time for this story.  But Levy has tried to minimize his blunder by being a good sport.  He congratulated the author of the hoax on a TV talk show last weekend.

INTERPRETER:  I think it’s a wonderful work.  I devote three lines to it in my book.  I find out five years later that it’s not the work of Botul, but Pages, so what?  What’s the big deal?  The book is still very good.  People say a few clicks on Wikipedia would have told me Botul’s name is Pages, except that when I read a book, I don’t click on Wikipedia.

OGER: In Levy’s defense, he wasn’t alone in being taken in.  Levy pointed out that he often quotes Botul during his conferences.  He did in a speech last year at France’s Ecole Normale Superieure, a top graduate school.  No one said anything.  The editors who proofread Levy’s book didn’t notice either.  But somehow the French find it much more fun when a celebrity philosopher gets caught red faced.  Again, Frederic Pages.

PAGES: Botul exists more and more.  The more you are speaking about him, the more it exists.  So we think that after a while we can say that Botul will exist for real.

OGER: The hullabaloo has at least brought Levy one thing; he’s now a serious contender for the Botul prize, awarded annually by the Botul Foundation for Botulism.  For The World, I’m Genevieve Oger in Paris.

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