prank

Emails from ‘The Littlest Literary Hoax’

243836982_c3025b2bd5The Chronicle of Higher Education recently posted an article about a few years old DFW/Delillo-related prank authored by a Jay Murray Siskind and published in Volume 11, Issue 4 of Modernism/Modernity, a scholarly literary critical quarterly review. According to the ChronicleMark Sample, an assistant professor of English at George Mason University, discovered the article, a review of Oblivion, in 2005 when one of his graduate students cited it in an essay. He forgot about it, time passed, then he got curious and dug some more to discover a good bit of humor behind the whole thing. I won’t go on to summarize all of the details, as plenty of information is out there already and many other blogs have covered it – see the following links:

Mark Sample’s original post regarding the ‘hoax.’

Sample’s follow-up post in response to an open letter written by the editor and former editor of Modernism/Modernity.

The Chronicle of Higher Education article, written by Peter Monaghan.

However, I do have this to add. I’ve got the email exchange between the graduate student, who asked to remain anonymous, and Sample, who kindly gave me permission to share it with you here. It’s a great little exchange, pretty funny. Enjoy after the break.

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August 6th, 2009 / 11:48 am