You think of self-help books as self-help books because in 1859 an author gave his manuscript the genre-defining title of Self-Help. The author’s name happened to be Samuel Smiles. Smile yourself, ironically.

And keep smiling, for a self-destructively bad-tempered Oxford philologist, George Bernard Shaw’s model for Henry Higgins in Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, was named Henry Sweet.

A brain surgeon who also wrote best-selling novels full of medical detail was named Frank G. Slaughter.

A younger cousin of Emily Dickinson who somehow just lost his mother’s large collection of unpublished Dickinson letters and poems was named Wallace Keep.

A lecturer I knew who possessed the power of filling with happiness every room she entered was named Norma Merry.

And May 1, 2025, happened to be the date when I sent the photosharing program Flickr an image which was promptly Liked by another member. Before then, this member’s own Flickr photostream had been a compendium of images made in two simple steps, only: first by pointing a phone in the general direction of something or other, then by hitting Save. But on that Mayday, my fellow member suddenly seemed to have been taught the idea of composition in art.  What came into being in that moment was, yes! a composition in its own right!

a composition just like mine!

merely made with a different model and saved without editing.

Who was he that paid such a tribute to the concept of irony?

Reader, he signed his name as Garry Forger.