| As several prominent recent
examples show, literary hoaxes
spring from a variety of
motives, though they sometimes
remain obscure.
In 1996, in an
effort to expose
the pretensions
of the academic
left, physicist
Alan Sokal (right)
submitted a
deliberately
absurd, error-ridden
article on
the transgressive
political
possibilities of
quantum physics
to the journal
Social Text – which
published it
without alteration.
Binjamin Wilkomirski (left) won acclaim for
''Fragments,'' his searing 1995 memoir of childhood
in the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration
camps. It was later discovered that he was
actually a non-Jewish Swiss man named Bruno
Doessekker – though he continued to believe his
own fabrications.
''My Own Sweet Time,'' an award-winning 1994
memoir by an Australian aboriginal woman named
Wanda Koolmatrie, was later revealed to be the
work of one Leon Carmen. After the truth was
uncovered, Carmen (above) lashed out at the
publishing industry for excluding white male authors
like himself.
|
