Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/The Death of Small Wonders

It is important to note the apparent motive behind this "hoax," as it may prove relevant in the future.

On May 15, 2011, the following was posted into the Talk page for The Death Of Small Wonders:

"I'm afraid we have to explain ourselves, though we hadn't ever foreseen that the situation regarding this book would spiral out of control so quickly.

First of all, we are deeply sorry that you feel "personally insulted" by The Death Of Small Wonders, and we are also deeply sorry for whatever has given you the ability to be so individually humiliated by such trivial things as fiction.

The Death Of Small Wonders is a work of metafiction, and a rather ambitious one at that. It is not a novel written in 1939, nor is Joseph Strauss, the visionary and reclusive writer, indeed real. These matters are, in fact, fictional. The Death Of Small Wonders, however, is as real as any story ever told by man or woman or god. The most complete copy, we're afraid, has only been published in a transient sort of fashion, and this is how it has gathered such negative attention among you encyclopaedia-types. The article and the story are synonymous. Perhaps the more clever among you saw that the article referenced a framing device for the narrative, but never mentioned exactly what the framing device was. The framing device is the article, and it was indeed rather "hasty." But the article is one of many critical interpretations of the book, which together constitute the story as a whole.

(The rule in our commune regarding The Death Of Small Wonders was that it was never to be mentioned on the internet, which we hoped would contribute to the enigmatic nature of the book. Unfortunately, the word somehow spread to several juvenile individuals, who apparently not only used the book as an example on the AP Literature test but also bragged about it to others, who then posted on a forum about it. At some point, one of said juveniles posted about The Death Of Small Wonders on Facebook and thus brought it to the attention of a member of Anonymous, which we understand you've dealt with before, who subsequently vandalized the page, which in turn brought the article to your noble attention.)

I fully expect the article to be deleted, and we recommend this action, as it is with great shame that we concede the secrecy of our endeavor. The various real literary journals to which we submitted our criticisms will no doubt discover the nature of the story soon, and halt its potential for becoming an underground mystery of the literary world: the very same literary culture that we had originally intended to satirize with The Death Of Small Wonders. The story will live on, but as a mask removed it has little use to us, and will be cast aside, a shadow broken open.

Humbly yours,

Gordon Joseph Bennett"