Mark Sample, assistant professor of contemporary American literature and new-media studies at George Mason University, has exposed what he calls the “littlest literary hoax,” the Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Sample has been patiently waiting for someone to speak up about the bogus review published in 2004 in Modernism/Modernity. He first noticed the piece in question—a review essay of David Foster Wallace’s Oblivion attributed to Jay Murray Siskind, a character from Don DeLillo’s White Noise, who is listed in the journal as a professor of culture at Blacksmith College, a nonexistent school—in late 2005, when a graduate student cited the review in a paper. “I had puzzled over it and decided that if I waited long enough, somebody (in Modernism/Modernity Wallace circles, in DeLillio circles) would come forward and take credit for something I’m sure they thought nobody would be fooled by,” he wrote on his blog, Sample Reality. Christy Nicole Wampole, one of the three managing editors would only say, “I have a feeling it might have something to do with a playful editor, but I cannot confirm.” The fact that no one spoke up earlier worries Sample. It feeds his concern that students are not learning to gauge the authenticity of articles. Although, he writes, when you read an academic journal, you’re not expecting to see it as at all humorous. When it is, that throws people out.”