Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2001
Subject: DeBrot virus spreading [answer to an old KNOCK KNOCK WHO'S THERE joke]

Given

(1) that Gary Sullivan circulated a falsified John Ashbery interview and
forged Ashbery poems (identity of author, not "Jacques Debrot," still
withheld by Sullivan),--- and

(2) that this unreliability has already entered into circulation and
spurred further misinformation via literaryhistory.com,--- and

(3) Given that Andrew Felsinger of litvert.com has published not
only "DeBrot" (in a case already commanding its own separate
international threats of lawsuit), but that litvert.com is also
strongly associated with Kent Johnson (suspected "forger" behind the
Yasusada deception) who espouses "heteronymity" and the widespread,
strategic use of noms-de-plume/noms-de-guerre and false identities
as a literary strategy,--- AND ---

(4) NOTO BENE --- that litvert.com published in its first issue a
poem by one "John Ashbery,"---

there is strong reason to believe that the litvert.com "Ashbery"
poem is also a forgery.

------------------------------------

It remains to be seen how the graduate English Dept. of Harvard
University reacts to one of their Ph.D. candidates ("DeBrot")
participating in a "ring" of falsification, and disseminating
inauthentic documents within his own research field.

In the tiny field of George Chapman autograph studies (translator of
Homer), there was a forger who compulsively altered any manuscripts
that might pass through his hands. The verifiability of all Chapman
sources must be triple-checked against whether the forger could have
potentially come in contact with the documents, in which case they
are rendered dubious. (If there were a Harvard doctoral candidate
worth his snuff, he would be able to supply the missing name of the
forger.)

Gary Sullivan's perpetration of the "DeBrot" "hoax" places into
question all contiguous parties, and it corrupts the credibility of
all publications therein. Note the similarity between the poem
attributed to "Benjamin Friedlander" (below) and an on-line poem
credited to "Jacques DeBrot" (thereunder,
http://www.theeastvillage.com/tb/debrot/p2.htm):

----------------------------------
"FRIEDLANDER":

MOTHER

It hurts
to chew on
the nipple of your pain
and feel the milk-
lessness of time
from the wrong end
of a nursing grudge
cowed by a pendulous Why?

----------------------------------
"DeBrot"

gluhhnkKKK-K

Your tongue makes my breasts girls. Clench up
and ball the nipple curving back, slapping against the mud.
The nerves jump intrin-
sically -- cow finger glistening
like nibbling candy. Start slowly, wonder
the bone of it while
my mess grows a pencil. Why?.
-----------------------------------

The identities of all List members using @hotmail accounts (like
Sullivan) or other such free addresses that do not verify sender
identity are open to doubt. Kent Johnson's "heteronymity" proposes
an entire community of fictionalized participants ("writing to and
about each other and back to their creators and through time,
re-valuing, dis-assembling, re-making the canon. What will the
poetry world do with this?":
http://www.litvert.com/KJ_Interview.html). Much of the List
exchanges you have been reading may have been between different
"heteronyms", personae, and sign-ons by the same writer or group of
writers.

(Please note recent, sudden switching back and forth between e-mail
addresses, changes of already fatuous sign-ons (from "][-n serf[" to
"][mex][", say), or the affixing of comical names ("Jennifer", for a
man) or "Jackson" as an previously unused second last name
coincidentally with List mentions of Laura Riding Jackson! or when
one "character" calls another by a wrong name ("Jim-- I'm humiliated
to be called Pierre after we've spent nights drinking 1/2 a dozen
times together & you've published me in _canihaveyr_") in ways that
are unnecessarily but conspicuously reenforcing earlier suspect
claims documenting their existence. Remain alert!)

Jim Behrle of canyouhaveyourballsback.com is practicing a form of
"reverse" or quasi-heteronymity, mailing his publication "11" to
people with the name "Zoe Johnson." "Michael Magee" (editor of
Combo) and "Jordan Davis" (editor of The Hat) are published in 11.

"Jacques Debrot" is the name of the cultural minister of The
Antilles (http://www.litvert.com/KJ_Interview.html).

**********************************************************
"Julu: This is a mess, just a blank, a brick, salvaged from the Amaya
test browser. Just a moment, the phone is ringing.

Julu: As I was saying, this is a mess. There's nothing to it, nothing.
The substitutions are weak; there's nothing to be done about it. It
was saved from Amaya through lynx. Hold on, someone's at the door."

--- Sondheim, Alan, (Untitled) Thu, 5 Jun 1997