LITERARY HOAXES
Sir,-Having read The Cruise of the Kawa, I agree with your recent correspondent that it is difficult to believe that people were fooled by it. The absurd illustrations would seem to .be enough to give the game away. However, my authority for the statement that the National Geographic Society wrote to "Dr. Traprock" asking for a conference is Hoaxes, a well-documented book by C. D. MacDougall (Macmillan, 1941). On pages 273 and 274 is given a complete account of the hoax and its effects, based partly on material supplied by Chappell himself, and including not only the National Geographic story but also the information that the Boards of Trade of Derby and Shelton, Connecticut, where Traprock was supposed to hail from, invited the "doctor" to deliver an address in his home town. Your correspondent is also referred to Books in Black and Red, by Edmund Lester Pearson (himself the author of the successful "Old Librarian’s Almanac, 1773" hoax) in which the author (certainly with exaggeration) calls The Cruise of the Kawa "the most influential hoax of history." He further states , that it dealt such a death-blow to romantic travel-books that "nobody dared to write in that vein afterwards." . The statement in my article was decidedly very moderate. In view of this, something more than the personal incredulity of your correspondent is required to convince me that, absurd and all, The Cruise of the Kawa did not deceive a great number of the public and not a few of the elect.
J.C.
R.
(Auckland).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 276, 6 October 1944, Page 5
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255LITERARY HOAXES New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 276, 6 October 1944, Page 5
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