Fakers : Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders - Paul Maliszewski

Fakers

Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders

By: Paul Maliszewski

Hardcover | 14 April 2009 | Edition Number 1

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Fakers are believed--and, at least for a time, celebrated--because they each promise us, screen-gazing and experience-starved, something real and authentic, a view, however fleeting, of a great thing rarely glimpsed. --from Fakers

From James Frey and his fake memories of drug-addled dissolution to Stephen Glass and his fake dispatches from the fringes of politics to the author formerly known as JT LeRoy and his fake rural tough talk, we are beset by real-seeming fiction masquerading as truth. We are living in the era of the fake.

Fakers is a fascinating exploration of the varieties of faking, from its historical roots in satire and con artistry to its current boom. Paul Maliszewski journeys into the heart of our fake world, telling tales of the New York Sun's 1835 moon hoax, the invented poet Ern Malley (the inspiration for Peter Carey's novel My Life as a Fake), and Maliszewski's own satiric letters to the editor of the Business Journal of Central New York (written, unbeknownst to the editor, while he worked there as a reporter). Through these stories, he explains why fakers almost always find believers and often flourish.

Since 1997, the author has been on the trail of fakers and believers, asking the tricksters why they dissembled and the believers why they were ever fooled. Fakers tells us much about what we believe and want, why we trust, and why we still get duped.

The essays in Fakers explore:

Jayson Blair's faked New York Times stories, about Jessica Lynch and much else

Early American con artists

Oscar Hartzell and the long-running Drake's fortune scam

Internet hoaxes about man-eating bears

Han van Meegeren's forged Vermeers

Clifford Irving's fake autobiography of Howard Hughes

Michael Chabon's fictionalized version of his early years

Binjamin Wilkomirski's fabricated Holocaust memoir

In-depth interviews with three fakers: journalist Michael Finkel, painter Sandow Birk, and performance artist Joey Skaggs

Industry Reviews
"Not only is Fakers beautifully written and fun to read, but it is tremendously useful. It explains clearly and with perfectly chosen examples just what the distinction is between pointed pranks and lazy fabrications, and between satire and malice. And unlike previous efforts on the subject, this one is entirely in favor of the imagination." - Luc Sante, author of Low Life and Kill All Your Darlings

"Here it is, the one true guide to the world of forgery. Paul Maliszewski shows us how to distinguish the masterpieces from the frauds, the inspired fakes from the merely counterfeit, tossing off along the way a few gemlike examples of the former. This is a perfect book for our pompous, authenticity-grubbing times." - Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew and What's the Matter with Kansas?

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