5. The Chuck Palahniuk short story Guts, a cautionary tale about masturbation, has caused 70 readers to faint.

4. Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in just three weeks (actually, it was written over seven years, typed up in three weeks, then revised over several months).

3. Alex Garland’s The Coma is both a document about, and the therapy for, writer’s block.

2. Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson copy-typed entire William Faulkner novels, expecting to appropriate the latter’s style and creativity.

1. The novels of  J.T. (Jeremiah Terminator) LeRoy are not the childhood memoirs of a gender-bending ‘lot lizard’, but the results of author Laura Albert using her imagination.  Just too good to be true, eh?