AustLit

Tucker quotes from Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams and Reflections to posit a theoretical framework from which to approach the Ern Malley poems. Tucker contends that McAuley and Stewart were overtaken by their own creation and succumbed, in the words of Jung, to 'something in me which can say things I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me ...'.

This article largely combines two previous articles by Harris - 'From the Introduction to the 1961 Edition of Ern Malley's Poems 'and 'Forty Four Years on...' - both of which were published in The Poems of Ern Malley (1988).

The criticism tracks the origin and progress of the Ern Malley Hoax beginning with the letters sent to Harris by Malley's sister, 'Ethel Malley', through the media discovery of the deception, the trial on indecency charges and the response to the hoax from the United Kingdom and the USA.

Harris provides a summary of the trial in which he was charged with having published fourteen 'indecent advertisements'. (Seven of the fourteen were from The Darkening Ecliptic; the others included the Peter Cowan short story, 'The Fence'.)

In the final section of the criticism, Harris reflects on the uniqueness of literary and cultural developments in Australia in the years since the first publication of Ern Malley's poems in Angry Penguins no.[6] in 1944 and in particular emphasises the role of Modernism.

Wilson contends that 'Stewart and McAuley's afternoon of slapdash "tachist" invention produced work of genuine merit, which affords us a fascinating insight into the creative process'. Included in Wilson's article is the text of a piece he wrote for the Japanese publication, I.D. Magazine in 1991. The magazine piece recounts the events of the Ern Malley Hoax, quotes extracts from Malley poems and concludes that McAuley and Stewart, 'in trying to create a parody, ... produced the poetic equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting'.