Literary Pranks and Padded Rooms: Literature Jests, but is Anybody Listening?

An article in the Chronicle (Washington's, not Austin's) takes a look back at a literary prank it took the Modernism/Modernity's (now questionable) readership five years to get. The prank in question was an article criticisizing David Foster Wallace, titled An Undeniably Controversial and Perhaps Even Repulsive Talent. Aside from the heresey of the sentiment (coded within an ironically Foster-esque title) the 'prankish' aspect of the article comes into play as early as the author's byline: Jay Murray Siskind, whom many will recognize as the quirky professor of Pop Culture in Don Delillo's epic White Noise. In the five years it's taken for the prank to be recognized, there have been many accounts of the article having actually been used as a secondary source for undergraduate and graduate research, which poses a number of fairly obvious problems with regards to contemporary scholarship (i.e. literary journals' ability to incorporate varied modes of writing, and whether or not they are being read to begin with) and collegiate students' frighteningly under-developed bullshit-o-meter. Do check out the article in full.