Peter
Carey's 'My Life as a Fake'
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Don't mess with these
surrealist birds. A shot of the
cover of the magazine where the
works of created poet Ern (as in
Ernest) Malley (mal as in bad)
were published.
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If you think you know what
you like, and you like poetry, someday you may
find yourself in for a rude surprise. In
October, 1943, in an Army barracks in Melbourne,
two bored officers with a particular dislike of
modern and surrealist poetry decided to create
the works of Ern Malley. Lieutenant James
McAuley and Corporal Harold Stewart spent a
Saturday afternoon having far too much fun as
literary DJs. Mixing in bits of Shakespeare, a
dictionary of quotations, a report on the
breeding grounds of mosquitoes and their own
efforts to compose deliberately vague bad verse,
they wrote the 16 poems which comprised Ern
Malley's "tragic lifework". Their masterstroke
was to create a rather dull sister, who was
purportedly sending the poetry to 'Angry
Penguins' the magazine of Australian Surrealist
poet Max Harris. Harris fell for the hoax,
published the poems and then found himself being
sued for obscenity by the South Australian
Police, who presumed words they did not know
were obscene. But even when he knew the poems
were a hoax, Harris defended their worth, and
they've since been used as classroom materials
by John Ashberry. Both the hoax itself and the
"poetry" created for the hoax turned out to be
fine examples of the surrealist movement, and
the Angry Penguins had their revenge.
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Based on the fascinating story of
an actual Australian hoax.
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Peter Carey has won two,
count 'em two Booker Prizes, and his latest
novel 'My Life as a Fake' is out in the UK now.
It goes the Ern Malley story one better, with a
person who shows up in court claiming to be the
created poet. It won't be out in the US till
next year, so get your copies now if you want to
see them rocket in value. Katie Dean and I will
be looking at this book in the coming month. You
should as well.
