DARUSHIMO

- Peter Monaghan for The Chronicle of Higher Ed

“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.

Mark Sample, an assistant professor of contemporary American literature and new-media studies at George Mason University, blew the whistle on his blog, Sample Reality.

[…]

Sample went on to ask: “On what level was the hoax perpetrated? Who was in on it? Were the editors of Modernism/Modernity aware?” And, given the lack of response to what had been a relatively transparent con, “Did any regular readers of the journal ever even read, really read, the review?” (The uncomfortable inference being, does anyone read any literary-studies articles?)”

via @ColumbiaUP