Author(s): David Brooks

Writing

The Sons of Clovis is a scholarly tour de force. It begins with the Ern Malley affair, establishing previously unrecognised connections between the Australian scene and French symboliste poetry, before embarking on a fascinating journey through literature, culture, and poetics. Making full use of his skills as novelist, poet, and scholar, David Brooks has created a page-turning literary history with the narrative tension of a thriller. In the mid-1940s, writers James McAuley and Harold Stewart submitted a series of poems to the modernist literary magazine, Angry Penguins, under the fictitious name Ern Malley. In a flurry of excitement, the poems were published in a special edition proclaiming the discovery of an important new Australian voice. When the hoax was exposed, it occupied the front page of newspapers around the nation for weeks. It is still Australia's best-known and most talked-about literary hoax. For the past twenty years, David Brooks has been on a quest to find the inspiration for the hoax and this journey has uncovered astounding facts that will overturn all previous assumptions about the hoax and its origins.
The resulting book is not just an account of the Ern Malley hoax; it is also a fascinating study of literary hoaxes and poetry in general. Written in a playful narrative style that takes the reader on a wide-ranging journey.