The Ern Malley affair may be the most important literary hoax of the 20th century. It grew out of a hatred of and the desire to debunk the avant-garde style of modernism.
In October 1943 on a Saturday, two traditional poets, Lieutenant James McAuley and Corporal Harold Stewart, in their offices at the Victoria Barracks of the Australian Army in Melbourne, Australia, hatched a plan to expose the bankruptcy of the modernist avant-garde trend of literature in British, Australian, and world poetry. They targeted the publication titled Angry Penguins and one of the editors, Max Harris.
As the legend would have it, within a few hours on that ordinary Saturday, the two young army men slapped together sixteen poems by collecting strings of words from the books and magazines that lay on their desks. Then they delivered a fictitious poet from the womb of mischief and named him Ern Malley, a take-off on the French word “mal” meaning bad.
Ethel Submits Erm’s Poems for Publication
Next, they invented a sister and called her Ethel, dreamed up a melancholy biography for the deceased auto mechanic turned insurance salesman poet, which Ethel would narrate, and they were all set. From the hands of Ethel, they posted ole Ern’s poems and biography to the magazine Angry Penguins.
Max Harris flipped over the poems, as did the other editors, and a special edition of Angry Penguins carried the fake poems and the fake biography of a fake poet. The two disgruntled poets, Lieutenant James McAuley and Corporal Harold Stewart, had accomplished their mission of showing the world that those who are taken in by the avant-garde, surrealistic drivel flowing from the pens of literary poetasters under the guise of modernism could be easily exposed by a real fake.
Hatred of Modernist Poetry
Steward and McAuley loathed the poetry of Dylan Thomas and Henry Treece, and other modernist poets, and they considered the modernist movement “pretentious nonsense.” They decided to expose the poetry that reminded them of “free association” tests, so they assigned three rules for writing the nonsense that would debunk the avant-garde, surrealistic poetastry:
1. There must be no coherent theme, at most, only confused and inconsistent hints at a meaning held out as a bait to the reader.
2. No care was taken with verse technique, except occasionally to accentuate its general sloppiness by deliberate crudities.
3. In style, the poems were to imitate, not Mr. Harris in particular, but the whole literary fashion as we knew it from the works of Dylan Thomas, Henry Treece and others
Based on these rules, the poems of Ern Malley were born.
Max Harris
Poor Max Harris, who was not a bad poet, and whose early poems were, in fact, quite traditional in form, faced a court trial for publishing the Ern Malley poems, which were considered obscene. Harris paid a fine, and his jail time was suspended. Still Harris’ reputation was less sullied than that of the Malley creators. Actually, McAuley and Stewart simply suffered from anonymity, with their only claim to fame being the Ern Malley affair.
Complicated but Fascinating Tale
There is much more to this convoluted caper, including intriguing biographical information about all the parties involved. Michael Heyward’s The Ern Malley Affair sheds light on the entire caper. Also, there is an official web site Ern Malley that is very informative.
Related article:
