Looking Back: The Importance of Being Ern

COMBINING high intelligence, high drama, side-splitting comedy, and disarming pathos in equal measure, the poetry of Ern Malley is surely the greatest literary hoax of the century. It was an in-joke that got out of control, a brilliant act of deception, not least because it tricked everybody by proving so durable, so fascinating, so arguable. Ern Malley was invented to prove a point about the development of contemporary poetry, and he did it decisively, or so it seemed at the time; but half a century later the issues the hoax raises about literary value are far from being resolved.

Mr. Heyward is the author of The Ern Malley Affair (Faber & Faber).

MH

About the Author

Michael Heyward

COMBINING high intelligence, high drama, side-splitting comedy, and disarming pathos in equal measure, the poetry of Ern Malley is surely the greatest literary hoax of the century. It was an in-joke that got out of control, a brilliant act of deception, not least because it tricked everybody by proving so durable, so fascinating, so arguable. Ern Malley was invented to prove a point about the development of contemporary poetry, and he did it decisively, or so it seemed at the time; but half a century later the issues the hoax raises about literary value are far from being resolved.

Mr. Heyward is the author of The Ern Malley Affair (Faber & Faber).