Jay Murray Siskind is a character in Don DeLillo's novel White Noise, yet he apparently wrote a review of Oblivion by David Foster Wallace. The review, titled "An Undeniably Controversial and Perhaps Even Repulsive Talent," appeared in the November 2004 issue of Modernism/Modernity. I learned about the review here, where they have posted the following excerpt:
It is at this point that I must confess to missing something in Wallace, namely the presence of women nearer the center of the narration (setting aside Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, Jr., the protagonist in Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System). I admit that I’ve always been partial to them, i.e. women. I fall apart at the sight of long legs, striding, briskly, as a breeze carries up from the river, on a weekday, in the play of morning light. And what fun it is to talk to an intelligent woman wearing nylon stockings as she crosses her legs. Wallace, I suspect, shares these predilections and could write wonderfully complicated women.
Editors of Modernism/Modernity responded to coverage of the fake review, here.
An Open Letter to Mark Sample,
We appreciate your recent remarks concerning a review essay about David Foster Wallace, one that appeared in late 2004 in the pages of Modernism/Modernity and was assigned to one Jay Murray Siskind, also the name of a character in Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise. It is saddening indeed to see the review being cited with po-faced earnestness, and surely you are right that this turns “a fun fake review into something much more telling about the state of academia.” All too plainly, the time has come to set the record straight...
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