The Quadrant hoax was a small story by world standards. But for small magazines it was the big story of the new year. It also raised intriguing questions about how to respond to it, and indeed about ethical response more generally.
Like others, I had a variety of responses. On first reading how the Quadrant editor was deceived into publishing a spurious article, I laughed. This was a classical sting, in which an editor and magazine that sternly criticise others for being intellectually undiscriminating, were proved to be less than discriminating.
My laughter, however, turned into sympathy, and even to apprehension. There but for the grace of God went I. As both potential victim and potential perpetrator. Like anyone who assesses the merits of articles submitted for publication, I recognised how fallible are my judgments, and how vulnerable Eureka Street would be to a high class sting.
I also confess being tempted to similar hoaxes. When annoyed by journals, particularly church magazines that dress up a harsh ideology in a facade of intellectual seriousness, I idly imagine myself submitting pseudonymously an article advocating the brutal church order congenial to the magazine.
It might be supported by quotations from Stalin's speeches, attributed to an undeservedly unknown Eastern European theologian.
But the lesser graces of laziness and prudence have so far held me back, and saved me from the embarrassment of disclosure.
Laughter, sympathy and apprehension led me eventually to ask what to make of the hoax. Was it appropriate to laugh? Should I chastise myself for dallying with fantasies of hoaxing? After all, the intellectual enterprise to which small magazines contribute relies on trust. It would collapse if we could not trust that writers generally mean what they say, and are who they say.
And do not hoaxes contain an element of cruelty? They are designed to humiliate editors and discredit their enterprise. Can truth be commended or defended by such methods, particularly when the author of the hoax remains unknown?
With these questions we have left laughter behind and moved into serious ethical mode. Ethics, of course, is conventionally done with prune faces and laser lips. It is about judging. Judges who award black and white hats have no business laughing. It is important to be earnest.
Or is it? When doing ethics, even the ethics of hoaxes, it may be important not to be earnest. To appreciate the full human reality