The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954)(about) |
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Tuesday 4 July 1944
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2 corrections, most recently by NightWalker - Show corrections
"ERN MALLEY"
The two cheerful and healthy- minded young graduates of the Sydney University who perpe- trated the much-discussed "Ern
Malley" hoax, and who thus blew to smithereens the irritating pre- tensions and incomprehensible philosophy of a school of so-called "modern poetry," are deserving, perhaps, of some higher distinc- tion than the bogus doctorate con- ferred upon them by "the Sydney University Oxometrical Society." But the authors of the "Ern Malley" documents, who labored so hard to make his pretended "poems" the most arrant gibberish, and whose highest expectations must have been exceeded when a laboriously bad skit on bad verse was hailed as the work of "a giant of contemporary Australian poetry," will not wear the trap- pings, if any, of "doctors of oxo- metry," with an ill grace. The one thing that remains to be thought of, is the invention of a fitting aca- demic award for the poetasters and other literary quidnuncs who took the fictitious "Ern Malley" to their bosoms, swearing that he was a genius after their own hearts, and implying, in the usual way, that all who ventured to pronounce him childish and incomprehen- sible, would but betray their own pathetic lack of aesthetic taste and spiritual perception. A wooden spoon, or a leather medal, might conceivably meet the case.