The wonderful and frightening world of literary hoaxes

Sometimes it’s exciting to be fooled. Especially when it’s not about money. Mainly because after that you can recreate your favorite moment from The Who’s “Won’t Be Fooled Again” — which is Roger Daltrey’s seminal title check and piercing “Yeah!”-scream and feel awkward about it.

You get a little bit wiser, little bit better because of it. You gain experience. And after that you can go on with your life like nothing happened. It may or may not bring a smile on your face much later on a certain occasion. You can also put your sunglasses on in the same time, but you’re definitely better than that.

Case in point, what happened to me some time ago.

***

Being an editor of a small-time zine is a thankless job. You are trying your best to deliver the best possible product basically for your own pleasure. In the meantime, you have to go through numerous submissions, consider the options and construct the next issue. It’s a loop. But sometimes it gets broken.

It was one of those days when i did a routine mailbox check. There was some stuff, but nothing really special. I’ve sent some declines, gave some comments, cleaned spambox and so on. And when i was about to close the tab — another letter had arrived.

I clicked on it and it was a pitch perfect magazine submission letter. You had a clear-cut introduction, short bio (let’s call the individual X), the piece itself and the explanation of what it is all about. It was fine, something you would definitely take into the next issue — a solid midcard piece — borderline nonsensical cut-up text with rapid shifts of narrative.

So I expressed an interest in the reply and went on with my life.

A couple of days later i’ve got a reply and it was generic “great” and “thanks” and also some “conversation starter” questions about the writer’s craft and artistic insight.

It was weird to get such questions, but nothing really suspicious. According to the bio, that individual was a student, so it was nothing out of ordinary. If anything, the questions were cute and a bit simple-minded. I gave some throwaway answers and went on. Then I got the reply and i was your basic “student discovering new and exciting stuff” kind of thought — very emotional, not very substantial.

The exchange went in the same manner for a couple of weeks before dying down.

By the time i started to put together an issue i wrote to all authors i was interested in participating — to be sure that the pieces are still available. Among the replies was the one by X who was especially ecstatic about it.

The phrasing was very peculiar and it caught my attention (since it was private exchange i won’t show any of it here). I’ve read that somewhere before.

After a quick search i’ve found another letter exchange from a couple of months prior. It was one of the professional submitters who sent his stuff everywhere disregarding the guidelines or common sense. His biography consisted of huge namedropping list of publications. It was like 300 words long paragraph.

The stuff he sent was a horrendous mix of cliches and bad taste. It was as purple as it gets. He got a decline and he was not happy about it. In fact, he confronted me more than once about it. First by email, than on Facebook.

The disgrunted comments included such sentences as “you don’t understand what real art is”, “all you do is jerk off to your talentless cronies”, “you won’t notice a good piece of writing even if it pegged you” and so on. The dude got blocked and I promptly forgot about his existence.

Until this response.

I’ve pointed out the similarities of the expressions and asked whether X knows that disgruntled professional submitter. The answer was predictable “nope”, so I’ve pushed further about lack of information on X online (it was my mistake not to check it way back). No reply.

A week later i’ve got “ok-fine” letter with some explanations. It was fascinating. The whole thing was orchestrated by that disgruntled submitter.

The goal was to expose myself and the magazine as “phony” and “fake” because “you couldn’t tell the real text with heart and soul from a thrown together piece of crap”. Fair enough. The question is “why bother?”

You get a decline, fine. That particular mag is not the only place to send stuff. But you put an effort, construct a fake personae, make a piece and try to pull off the hoax just to get back at the editor who wronged you. That’s a commitment.

The piece was legitimately fine. It had some moments and wouldn’t be out of place in the mag. I think it was better than any other text i’ve read from this author. It felt weird.

This whole thing got me thinking about literary identity and hoax orchestration.

***

Our life is seemingly shaped around the so-called “men of wealth and taste” — the great men. We live inside a culture transfixed on the cult of the personality.

In literature it is even more apparent. Author — the man behind it all — is one of the victims of this attitude, the one whose personality is completely separated, sometimes severed from his work. His body of work in this case is almost an afterthought.

That’s a tragic situation that suppresses the real workers of the word in favor of those who fit the big picture. The whole attitude towards the writers amongst the masses can be described like that: “Why don’t you just give up? Do yourself a favor! See, your life is uninspiring, glaring void! We will never pay you any kind of attention! You don’t matter! Just admit it! Stop! Please stop!” and so on and so forth.

That in turn causes common writer to think “Why don’t I just give up and submit to the Great God of Bland, because all my exotic gestures are no longer in demand…” and then goes the defeated down the road of ghostwriting and other pitiful acts of self-loath, succumbing to fear, cowardice and shame.

***

It is fascinating how much attention is given to the writer’s persona and such supplementary things as his views on various subjects instead of his primary output — his writings.

Authors are overexposed and it makes them no favors. Everybody knows who they are, less than a half knows what are they writing about and even less read it properly.

Measurement of importance of a certain writer had shifted from judging his body of work as it is and also within the cultural context to his marketability, zeitgeist appeal, media exposure and so on.

Fancy writers with cool backgrounds and flashy subjects are more likely to gain prominence than some hacks who write sprawling narratives grounded in multi-level realities intertwined with one another.

In such forced parallel reality literary hoax is some kind of a cure. Which is mind numbing if you really think about it.

***

Literary hoaxes often get a bad rap because it’s an act of fraud and thus it must be discouraging to perform such hideous acts.

It goes in the same vein as “lying is bad” — completely devoid of any context and thus a bit more didactic then it should be.

And it’s right. Making things up in certain situations is not only bad but harmful — such as fake accounts of Holocaust survivors. But in other, less sensitive, cases — literary hoaxes can be fun in one way or another.

It’s an ultimate literary cannon fodder for thought.

It’s like an ink drop in the water — significant for a moment until it dissolves. It is so many things rolled in one.

• It’s an investigation in a whodunit manner,
• it’s uncovering the details surrounding its creations,
• it’s analyzing the initial reactions and subsequent consequences,
• it’s a comparison of forged texts with the official output of the executor.
• It’s also the fun to be fooled by one if you ever be lucky to experience that.

The fact is — literary hoax is such a rich, layered narrative that you can be involved in the story on so many levels, focusing on themes you’re interested in the current moment and discovering so many different shades of one thing simply from changing the point of view almost on an infinite loop. And that’s only the spectator’s part.

***

From a writer’s point of view — things are a bit different.

There are many reasons to do the hoax. Most of them involve having an ego of the Jupiter’s size and unrelenting, defiant contempt towards contemporaries (what a marvelous word choice!).

Longing to make fools out of those “poseurs” is a strong motivation. Such was Ern Malley affair. It was designed so that its victims would taste their own medicine.

Sometimes it can be just a practical joke — surely meant to discourage and downright embarrass the victim and to make fun of initial reactions, but essentially it is harmless. Such things were made by the great Prosper Merimee, La Guzla in particular.

Sometimes it’s just for writing’s sake — because writer can write so differently from his usual style that no one will make the connection. Like Thomas Chatterton and his Thomas Rowley. Even “Robinson Crusoe” was conceived as a hoax.

However, “screw you” and “because I can”-attitudes are not the only reasoning to do the hoax.

There are also other reasons.

Literary hoaxes may have grander ambitions than a friendly or not so poking, such as changing the course of history, enriching and widening national aesthetic narrative.

MacPherson’s Ossian or Book of Veles is what comes to mind. Both pieces made wonders to the cultural narratives and even the exposee told a lot about the psyche behind it.

Edward Williams and persona Iolo Morganwg had a significant influence on a neo-druid movement even if he was just masterfully imitating and forging medieval scripts.

Also Yuriy Vynnychuck made a big splash with his Ryanghabar’s report of The Great Kyiv Plunder of 1240 even he was just poking fun at self-serious scholars.

It also can be just making thing up to fill the required space. Like Victor Yerofeyev and his overview of Canadian literature in the Soviet Literary Encyclopedia.

Sometimes hoax is the necessity, because there is no other way to express your thoughts and get your published without harming yourself (mostly).

Because of growing absurdity of political correctness and its unholy alliance with spiteful bigotry — this practice may soon become a common thing.

That’s how it went down in USSR back in the day — Andriy Sinyavskiy’s Abram Terz or Yuliy Daniel’s Nikolai Arzhak are amongst the most infamous examples. I guess these days the same thing goes on online in Turkey, China and other not so free countries.

***

Part of the appeal of literary hoaxes lies in its completely ridiculous ludicrousness.

Any way you look at it — it makes sense and it the same time makes no sense. You’re on the Moebius strip.

• You read it, possibly few times. Some parts of it settle in your memory.
• You take time to know every detail of it,
• you dig deep to taste the thick of it
• — hours and hours pass and by the time you’re done with it — you’re so involved you don’t know what to think.
• You carry it around like it’s a candy cover in your pocket and it grows on you like some kind of a mold.
• You try not think about it but then it goes again and again and again.
• The fact is — the more you think about it — the more you like it.
• No matter how closely you study, no matter how you take it part, no matter how you break it down — it remains a barely holding together enigma.
• “Why?”-part is never fully satisfied. Because it not part of its design.

It just hangs on semiunresolved before it gets lost in the shuffle of everyday life.

In the world of tell-all ghostwriting extravaganza literary hoaxes are things-in-itself free of the surrounding world. They exist inside of their own bubble.

Hoax offers a fuller experience, complete with biography, background, texts and even meta-rides to the real world in the form of different reactions or comments or interpretations.

You get the experience. You get a little bit wiser, little bit better. And you may smile because of it later on a certain occasion.