If you take your creative work remotely seriously, you probably pride yourself on your good taste and critical judgement.
Just like Max Harris.
In the 1940s, Harris was one of the leading figures of the Australian literary scene. A noted poet himself, he edited the magazine Angry Penguins, which championed avant-garde modernist poetry. Gifted and charismatic, Harris enjoyed provoking Australia’s conservative poetry establishment by praising and publishing surrealist poems in his magazine.
Although he attracted a close circle of like-minded poets, Harris was frustrated by Australia’s failure to produce a great modernist poet who could rival masters such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.
Then one day, he received a letter from a lady introducing herself as Miss Ethel Malley from Croydon, accompanied by a sheaf of poems by her late brother Ern Malley. Although she was ‘not a literary person’ she had been advised by a friend that they were ‘very good’ and ‘should be published’. She asked Harris if he would be so kind as to let her know ‘whether you think there is anything in them’.
Harris read and re-read the 17 poems with increasing excitement. Their experimental modernist style was very much to his taste. He thought there was a great deal in them – so much so that he devoted an entire issue of Angry Penguins to their publication and commemoration of Australia’s lost modernist master.
But the Ern Malley edition of Angry Penguins didn’t quite produce the desired response. One of Harris’s former university lecturers, Brian Elliott, praised the poems in a review – but accused Harris of writing them himself, in an attempt to hoax the public.
Harris strongly denied the accusation, going so far as to hire a private detective to investigate Malley’s background and prove the authenticity of the poems. But when the detective drew a blank, Harris started to become concerned.
Concern jolted into alarm when he was woken at 2 a.m. by a journalist full of questions about the poems and their origins. Shortly afterwards, a Sydney newspaper broke the news that there never had been an Ern Malley nor an Ethel Malley in Croydon.
Speculation filled the Ern Malley-shaped void. Some still suspected Harris of writing the poems himself. Harris himself, knowing he was not short of enemies, suspected several leading writers of concocting the hoax – perhaps together.
Will the Real Ern Malley Please Stand Up?
The suspense was ended by the university newspaper On Dit, which exposed poets James McAuley and Howard Stewart as the hoaxers. They claimed to have knocked up the poems in an afternoon, producing deliberately bad poetry in order to test Harris’s critical judgement:
We opened books at random, choosing a word or phrase haphazardly. We made lists of these and wove them in nonsensical sentences. We misquoted and made false allusions. We deliberately perpetrated bad verse, and selected awkward rhymes from a Ripman’s Rhyming Dictionary.
McAuley and Stewart were hostile to avant-garde poetry in general and Angry Penguins in particular, and made the most of their opportunity to rub it in:
Mr. Max Harris and other Angry Penguins writers represent an Australian outcrop of a literary fashion which has become prominent in England and America… The distinctive feature of the fashion, it seemed to us, was that it rendered its devotees insensible of absurdity and incapable of ordinary discrimination.
Our feeling was that by processes of critical self-delusion and mutual admiration, the perpetrators of this humourless nonsense had managed to pass it off on would-be intellectuals and Bohemians, both here and abroad, as great poetry.
However… it was possible that we had simply failed to penetrate to the inward substance of these productions. The only way of settling the matter was by way of experiment. It was, after all, fair enough. If Mr Harris proved to have sufficient discrimination to reject the poems, then the tables would have been turned.
When the full extent of the hoax got out, it was open season on Harris, whose reputation never recovered. Few people were convinced by his defiant claim that the poems had intrinsic merit, regardless of their origin. To add insult to injury, he found himself in court when some of the Ern Malley material was judged to be indecent and immoral. He lost the case and was fined five pounds.
Although Ern Malley never existed, he had a significant impact on Australian poetry – according to The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, genuine modernist poetry ‘received a severe setback, and the conservative element was undoubtedly strengthened’.
In one final twist of irony, Ern Malley turned out to be by far the most memorable literary creation of either James McAuley or Howard Stewart.
For more details of this fascinating story, check out the official Ern Malley site.
It Couldn’t Happen to You… Could It?
I have mixed feelings about the Ern Malley affair. On the one hand, it’s hard not to share the conspirators’ glee in exposing the pretensions of a man who arguably should have known better.
But having edited a poetry magazine myself, I can’t help feeling some sympathy for Max Harris. I’m pretty confident of my literary judgement and I’m proud of the selection of poems I made for my issue of Magma. But as I waded through the thousands of poems in my inbox, there were moments when I could feel the ghost of Ern Malley hovering over me. How could I be sure, the ghost whispered, that I wasn’t rejecting a masterpiece or accepting a piece of codswallop?
No doubt there are one or two poets out there who would argue that I did miss out on a masterpiece. And I’m pleased to report that (so far) none of the poets I selected has been exposed as a hoaxer. But for me, Ern Malley serves as a reminder that we are all fallible.
Who knows which of us will next find ourselves wearing the Emperor’s New Clothes?
Over to You
Is it possible to establish ‘objective’ critical standards in any creative field – or will judgments always contain an element of subjectivity?
Could the Ern Malley affair only happen in a ‘fine art’ like poetry – or can you think of any examples in commercial creative fields?
How do you sharpen your critical judgement? Have you made any memorable gaffes? (Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with us. 😉 )
About the Author: Mark McGuinness is a poet and creative coach.
Ah, man, I watched a news special on Bernie Madoff this morning, and now I’m reading about poetry hoaxes — it’s only 10 a.m., and I don’t trust anybody!
Excellent story, though, and a very salient point about the importance of critical judgment — and being very skeptical about geniuses (poetic or financial) that appear out of nowhere.
I can think of two areas where “expert opinion” is much less objective than the “experts” would like their clients to believe: appraisal of antiques/collectibles, and corporate branding.
An appraisal is an expert’s opinion of what a collectible is “worth”. But collectors pay based on appraisals, so the whole system is based on consensus of opinion. Any appraiser who consistently provides estimates out of line with recognized experts is deemed to not be a true expert. Credentials are the degree to which an individual is able to reflect the existing consensus.
For corporate branding, look at Tropicana’s recent “historic integrated-marketing and advertising campaign … designed to reinforce the brand and product attributes, rejuvenate the category and help consumers rediscover the health benefits they get from drinking America’s iconic orange-juice brand.” http://adage.com/article?article_id=135735
It turns out they were completely wrong, and sales plummeted 20% in the month after the new design was introduced.
For a glorious collection of rebranding mumbo-jumbo, google for “whalesong site:theregister.co.uk”. You’ll find such gems as, “The implied Swiss cross in the logo, the warmth of the red shade and the axis as the central starting point create a sense of closeness, combining and uniting our customers’ different experiences. The dynamism of the logo shows that life is a moving force and full of surprises. Swisscom gets things moving, has its fingers on the pulse and is part of everyday life.”
Fascinating story, Mark.
Regarding subjectivity–whether in a creative or “uncreative” (?) field–whenever people are doing the judging, there’s no escaping it.
This post also caused me to contemplate the reference to ‘creative field(s).’ I understand your contextual use of the term here.
But I found myself asking, “Is there any field of work that doesn’t involve creativity?”
The answer brought me right back to the human element. Creativity is a factor in every field because people are involved… even in the most sterile, seemingly unimaginative areas of work.
Thanks for another provocative, awareness-boosting experience.
In his book On Writing, Stephen King talked about the large number of rejections he got from publishers. Once he made it big as an author he went back and resubmitted some of the stories from the rejection pile (with very few revisions) and they were glowingly accepted.
I agree that the “expert opinion” is not always as objective as they like to think. That is why something can gain critical fame and loose out on the masses and vice versa.
Catherine – If you come across a Poetry Of New Zealand Investment scheme run by Ern Madoff, I’d give it a wide berth if I were you. 😉
Drew – Props for suggesting corporate branding. My personal favourite is the UK Post Office renaming itself ‘Consignia’ in 2000. Not only did the public hate it, the organisation’s own employees boycotted the name. In 2002 the powers that be regained their senses and renamed the organisation ‘Royal Mail Holdings’.
Mary Anne – I like Richard Bandler’s take on subjectivity. He said ‘it’s the one thing in life you can’t be wrong about. If that’s the way it seems, that’s the way it seems’. 🙂
Eric – Excellent example! Anthony Trollope did a similar experiment in reverse: at the height of his fame he published some stories under an assumed name, and watched them attract little or none of the attention that usually greeted his new works. He concluded that ‘very much consideration is due to better feelings of disappointed authors’.
A fascinating post. Poems that hoaxed an editor. Being a prankster myself, I loved that. But it did seem a bit cruel to take it that far. It does make one wonder about “expert opinion.” Heaven forbid I ever compare myself to an expert!!
I’d argue that mastery is an event to be witnessed, not a thing which to be possessed. Truly objective standards cannot be established.