An Apple from the Postmodern Tree

In Hindu, "avatar", from the word meaning "descent", refers to the the descent of a god to earth in a human or other form. According to Wiki, it is usually translated into English as "incarnation", but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation." Modern computer lingo uses avatar as a substitute for oneself, an alternative personality or a representative of someone on-line or gaming. It is inevitable it would evolve into the academic world.

In 2002 an article appeared in the Dickensian, the magazine of the Dickens Fellowship, describing a meeting between Charles Dickens and Dostoevsky written by Stephanie Harvey. In it, the Russian novelist recalls the meeting in an 1878 letter to his doctor and friend S.D. Yanovksy. This letter and its review in the Dickensian has been written about and commented upon for a while. Most recently it was analyzed by Eric Naiman from the University of California in the Times Literary Supplement.

What emerges is a fraud, sizable and somewhat whimsical. The Dostoevsky letter does not exist.  Nor does Stephanie Harvey, at least as Stephanie Harvey. She is, instead, A.D.  (Arnold) Harvey, a disgruntled would-be male academic, a writer of literature and history, a man disappointed by his inability to get a teaching position, a man who seemingly falls somewhere between a bitter, angry social critic and an avuncular curmudgeon. For the last thirty years he has been Stephanie Harvey, Graham Headley, Trevor McGovern, John Schellenberger, Leo Bellingham (author of "Oxford: The Novel"), Michael Lindsay, Janis Blodnieks and Ludovico Parra--authors, critics, poets--writing, publishing, and often commenting  in scholarly journals and little magazines on one another. (He even, as Trevor McGovern, invented the new concept of "self-plagiarism" by publishing an article which in reality was chapter seven from Harvey's--his-- first book, "Britain in the Early 19th Century", with just the first and last sentence changed.) As Naiman wrote, "..[Harvey created]...a community of scholars who can analyse, supplement and occasionally even ruthlessly criticise each other's work."

The revelation has provoked outrage and angst. Peer review has suffered. Good and honest men humiliated. Resignations offered.

But in a postmodern  world of disbelief, uncertainty, misconception and inexactness no one should be surprised. Or indignant.