KJ:

"Genuine Hoaxes" are the first level: fabrications carried out with no intention of ever being exposed. In this category would be such works as James Macpherson's 18th century Ossian, the Piltdown Man forgery, all manner of art forgeries, the Hitler Diaries, and so on. The second level is what McHale calls "Trap Hoaxes." The point of these "traps" is didactic and punitive-- to embarrass or expose the foolish credulity of a certain audience. In this category one would have the famous Ern Malley hoax, designed to demolish the credibility of the 1940's Australian avant-garde, or, more recently, the Sokal hoax, crafted to reveal the ignorance of "post-structuralist" academic critics of science. The third level is that of "Mock Hoaxes," which for McHale are fundamentally aesthetic in intent, and which, to greater and lesser degrees, are purposely adorned with signs of self-exposure. Rather than serving some ulterior agenda, as is the case with the first two categories, he argues that in mock-hoaxes "issues of authenticity and inauthenticity are elevated to the level of poetic raw materials...Mock-hoax poems make art out of inauthenticity." He places the work of Fernando Pessoa, Thomas Chatterton, and Yasusada in this category. But for McHale these categories are also made porous by contingencies of time and place, and works that through intention fit in one category can slide, through reception, into another. It's a wonderfully insightful paper, I think.