In a footnote on Halloween, I wrote that “it seems unlikely” that Jack Spicer “would have heard of” the fictive literary figure Ern Malley. This brought the following note from Kevin Killian:

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Hi Ron,

I'm not sure this changes your point much, but I know you'll be glad to know that further research indicates that Jack Spicer was indeed aware of the Ern Malley/"Angry Penguins" affair, and that indeed he came up with a plan to imitate the hoaxers in a variety of US magazines some 20 years before the Book of Magazine Verse. I don't want to blow all the surprises, but the next issue of the new Bay Area magazine 26 will publish an article by me and Lew (Ellingham) which grows out of our recent interview with Barbara Nicholls, a woman who now lives in Eugene (Oregon) but who once was part of the so-called "Berkeley Renaissance." She got in touch with us some time after our biography was published and offered to fill in some of the gaps. Last year she came to the Bay Area where we met her and got the entire scoop. It's a pretty good article and well, to make a long story short, Spicer's post Ern-Malley hoax involved an ambitious scheme to spoof New Critical practice by elevating the works of Gene Stratton Porter to canonical status.* Largely forgotten today, Gene Stratton Porter was a photographer, naturalist, novelist and mini-mogul . . . her novels were romantic fantasies of mankind versus Mother Nature and included Freckles and The Girl of the Limberlost. She died in a tragic Frida-Kahlo-like trolley accident in Los Angeles in the 1920s. Hope you find this of some use. xxx

Kevin K.

* Some Gene Stratton Porter links:

<![if !supportLists]>§         <![endif]>http://www.strattonporter.com/index.html

<![if !supportLists]>§         <![endif]>http://www.genestrattonporter.net/

<![if !supportLists]>§         <![endif]>http://digital.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/author?name=Stratton-Porter%2C%20Gene

<![if !supportLists]>§         <![endif]>http://www.ebookmall.com/alpha-authors/s-authors/Gene-Stratton-Porter.htm

<![if !supportLists]>§         <![endif]>http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/stratton.htm

<![if !supportLists]>§         <![endif]>http://www.indianahistory.org/heritage/birdwo.html