Is It Reality or Art? The Perils of a Fictional Life

Librarian Daria Carter-Clark of New York announced last week that she is suing author Joe Klein for writing a fictional scene in his novel, “Primary Colors,” which, she thinks, may make other people think that a minor character who has a sexual fling with the president could be based on her--thereby causing $100-million worth of defamation.

No sooner was this suit pressed then Rita Gormley of Birmingham, England, revealed her intention to take the Beatles to the cleaners for 145 million pounds. “My mum and all them say I coulda’ been the meter maid in that song,” she fumed, “my name being Rita and all. No bloody wonder I never got offered no nuclear physicist job or like that. ‘Oh, she’s only a meter maid, that Rita. Thick as a post.’ Cut me career off at the knees it did. Them lads owe me!”

This potent new combination of litigiousness, thin skin and what appears to be a kind of mental telepathy is likely to wax a lot hotter before it wanes. Authors seem due to bear much of the brunt: Hare “Bunny” Buggs of Beverly Farms, Mass., is charging that driving past his mailbox gave John Updike the idea of naming his famous character “Rabbit” Angstrom, and that Buggs’ friends had been smirking at him behind his back ever since--causing $3 million in pain and suffering or 10% of Updike’s “Rabbit” royalties, whichever is higher.

A waitress in Sweeney, Texas, is suing Gabriel Garcia Marquez for desertion because, although they had never met, much less cohabited, escaping a life with her very well might have been on his mind when he came up with the title “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” And a $60-billion class-action libel action has been filed against the estate of the author of the ‘50s best-seller “The Man With the Gray Flannel Suit,” by half a million plaintiffs who could have been unjustly accused of being ad men because they wore business attire made of a soft woven wool or of a blend of wool and cotton or synthetics.

Meanwhile, Madge Hoolihan of Rye Beach, N.H., has brought legal action against William Shakespeare, his assigns and heirs on the grounds that had the Bard lived in this century in her community, he would have “overheard certain family gossip” and made her his model for Lady MacBeth--setting local tongues to wagging so fiercely that she would be driven from her job and bridge club, go mad and lose any chance of winning this month’s $15-million state lottery jackpot.

Ex-Pfc. Duane Wayne is suing the U.S. Army to have a perpetual flame installed outside his Bean Station, Tenn., trailer home and an annual Veterans’ Day 21-gun salute, on grounds that his totally obscure military career could have been the inspiration behind America’s Unknown Soldier, but that “It’s no fun and no fair to just lie there unnoticed day after day for years, especially when you’re not even dead.”

And speaking of dead, lawyers are said to be preparing a blockbuster legal suit on behalf of megastar Madonna against the late Eva Peron, for living a life that forced the American singer-actress to play a tramp, a slut and a glorified bimbo in the current motion picture, “Evita,” contributing to a stereotype that could narrow her career opportunities as she ages.

Madonna’s concurrent suit against Mother Teresa, for “knowingly, wantonly and with premeditation” being too saintly for Madonna to believably play her in a movie--thus depriving the blond bombshell of vast future income--is going forward.

For her part, Mother Teresa is suing the Vatican for publicizing her saintliness so energetically that people think she’s too good to be true; and party, advance-screening and country weekend invitations have fallen off precipitously.