literary hoax - The Art of the Prank

August 6, 2009December 15, 2023

The Hoax Nobody Noticed

What If You Pull a Literary Hoax and Nobody Notices?
by Peter Monaghan
The Chronicle Review
August 3, 2009

photo_1235_landscape-200 Perpetrators of literary hoaxes often like to be discovered, if only for recognition of their cleverness. But for someone or someones at the literary-studies journal Modernism/Modernity, that gratification has been a while coming.

In 2004 the journal, which is the quarterly of the Modernist Studies Association, ran a review essay of the writer David Foster Wallace’s story collection Oblivion. The essay was a put-on, a leg-pull, a sham, in ways that take some explaining for nonspecialists in recent American fiction. But no one publicly called attention to the con until last month. Continue reading “The Hoax Nobody Noticed”

July 30, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #24: Home-Made Hocus Pocus Masquerades as Wisdom of an Ancient People

Here’s the twenty fourth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog. In this installment, Elvin continues his survey of literary fraud focused on Australia…

LiteratEye #24: Home-Made Hocus Pocus Masquerades as Wisdom of an Ancient People
By W.J. Elvin III
July 31, 2009

aborigines-425 “Jangga Meenya Bomunggur.”

In other words, “The smell of the white man is killing us.”

That’s from the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation’s mission statement, a very powerful statement and well worth checking out.

The Dumbartung group is an arts advocacy organization in Australia.

One thing the indigenous people find stinky about the white man, or in this case, woman, is exploitation through false claims of association and knowledge.

There have been several cases of authors making false claims of that sort. One in particular provoked Aborigine delegations to track down the perpetrator, Marlo Morgan.

They tried to confront Morgan, author of Mutant Message Down Under, in the United States and Japan.

Morgan made millions from Mutant. In it, she claimed she was kidnapped by a mysterious band of Aborigines, forced to go on desert walkabout, and ultimately initiated into realms of secret knowledge. Continue reading “LiteratEye #24: Home-Made Hocus Pocus Masquerades as Wisdom of an Ancient People”

July 3, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #20: Can a Spoof Morph Into the Real Deal?

Here’s the twentieth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #20: Can a Spoof Morph Into the Real Deal?
By W.J. Elvin III
July 3, 2009

Ern Malley Movie Poster The intemperate torch grazed
With fire the umbel of the dark.
The pond-lilies could not stifle
The green descant of frogs.

Is it possible for a hoax, a masterpiece of ridicule, to morph into a respected example of exactly what it was meant to spoof? That’s a serious question regarding the lines quoted above, a snippet of work of the poor lost legendary poet, Ern Malley.

An obscure, young Australian insurance salesman and part-time watch repairman in the days prior to World War II, Malley never lived to see his work become world famous. Well, for that matter, he never lived at all. Continue reading “LiteratEye #20: Can a Spoof Morph Into the Real Deal?”

June 26, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #19: Had It With Airport Hassles? Grab a Rug and Go!

Here’s the nineteenth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #19: Had It With Airport Hassles? Grab a Rug and Go!
By W.J. Elvin III
June 26, 2009

flycarpeta Last week we looked into imaginary destinations so it seems reasonable to follow up with a look at imaginary transportation – from the perspective of literary hoaxes, of course.

This “hoax,” as it is now known, comes from Australia, though you will now find it scattered around the world-wide web as genuine. It claims to report new findings regarding flying carpets, also known as magic carpets.

Australia sometimes seems a hotbed for literary mischief. It’s probably no hotter than any other bed, just a society engaged in a struggle for cultural identity that makes for a climate more sensitive to fakery. Here in America such things are a bit of yawn. We’ve had fifty years or so of journalists educating us to the fact that our culture is a gob of scandal and artifice, so that today, who cares?

But back to Australia, thinking back to the spinning globe on a brass or wooden holder that decorated the high school geography classroom, maybe it has to do with how Australians walk around upside down. You don’t see as much literary foolery coming out of, say, Canada, where people are more straight-up. Continue reading “LiteratEye #19: Had It With Airport Hassles? Grab a Rug and Go!”

April 17, 2009December 15, 2023

LiteratEye #10: Poetic Injustice

Here’s the tenth installment of LiteratEye, a series found only on The Art of the Prank Blog, by W.J. Elvin III, editor and publisher of FIONA: Mysteries & Curiosities of Literary Fraud & Folly and the LitFraud blog.

LiteratEye #10: Poetic Injustice
By W.J. Elvin III
April 17, 2009

682_dean_no_date-200 Every generation has its crop of dazed and confused kids, looking for somebody to be. Years ago, the actor James Dean was somebody to be. And then, at the age of 24, piloting his new silver Porsche 550 Spyder, he left us wannabes behind and headed for the stars.

So I was enthused, in a nostalgic way, when I discovered a book, “Rebel With a Pen: the Poetry of James Dean.” How wonderful. I mean, that was the Beat era, so I figured reading Dean would be reminiscent of Jack Kerouac and the “sporadic bop prosody” poetry gang.

Not exactly.

The fact is, James Dean didn’t write these poems. But you won’t learn that from the book’s cover, where all indications are that it’s genuine James. Continue reading “LiteratEye #10: Poetic Injustice”