Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

by Kevin Young
Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

by Kevin Young

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction

“There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential.” —Marlon James

Has the hoax now moved from the sideshow to take the center stage of American culture?

The award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon—the legacy of P. T. Barnum’s “humbug” culminating with the currency of Donald J. Trump’s “fake news.” Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and “What Is It?,” an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution.

Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and frauds invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from the pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. This brilliant and timely work asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of “truthiness” where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a contagious cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781555978167
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Publication date: 09/04/2018
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 576
Sales rank: 201,987
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Kevin Young is the author of a previous book of nonfiction, The Grey Album, a New York Times Notable Book, and of eleven books of poetry. He is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the poetry editor for The New Yorker.

Table of Contents

Book 1 A History of the Hoax

1 The American Museum: On the madness of crowds

Chapter 1 The Age of Imposture 7

Humbug

P.T. Barnum

Matthias the Prophet

The Moon Hoax

Poe

Tales

Chapter 2 The Freaks of Dame Fortune 27

Joice Heth

The Mummy

The Mammy

What is It?

The Circassian Beauty

Chapter 3 Splitfoot 45

Spiritualism

William H. Mumler

The Fox Sisters

Spirit Photography

Heaven Tourism

The Cottingley Fairy Hoax

Arthur Conan Doyle

Chapter 4 Bearded Ladies 63

The Lincoln Letters

The "Dreadnought" Hoax

George Psalmanazar

Girl Wonders

Opal Whiteley

Joan Lowell

Travel Liars

2 Neverland: On race & other popular delusions

Chapter 5 Cowboys & Aliens 95

Pornographies

Imaginary Indians

Grey Owl

Nasdijj

Chapter 6 Blood Nation 117

Memoir

James Frey

Margaret B. Jones

Little Tree

Captivity

Poetic License

Chapter 7 Lost Boys 139

Faction

Forbidden Love

Three Cups of Tea

Gay Girl in Damascus

Mutant Message Down Under

Chapter 8 The Time Machine 161

Lost Races

Professor Agassiz

Dr. Moreau

Degeneration

Miscegenation

War of the Worlds

Piltdown Man

The Cardiff Giant

The Tasaday

3 Mysteria: A sideshow

Chapter 9 The Heart Is Deceitful 189

JT LeRoy

Lance Armstrong

Laura Albert

Sybil

Anthony Godby Johnson

Hysteria

Chapter 10 Eve Black 211

Eve White

South Virginia

Avatar

Millennialism

Book 2 The Hoaxing of History

4 The Vampire's Mirror: Of imposture, forgery & monsters

Chapter 11 Butterfly Books 233

Frankensteins

Frederic Prokosch

Lily

Thomas Wise

Major Byron

Voices

Chapter 12 Spruce Goose 253

The Hitler Diaries

The Autobiography of Howard Hughes

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Fake!

Elmyr

Chapter 13 Bakelite 271

Han Van Meegeren

The Hitler Diaries

Jerzy Kosinski

Chapter 14 The Vampire's Wife 285

The Painted Bird

Binjamin Wilkomirski

Laura Grabowski

Autofiction

5 Hack Heaven: Of the journalist & the liar

Chapter 15 Glass Ceilings 305

The New Narrative

Ravi Desai

The New Republic

Ern Malley

Ruth Shalit

Stephen Glass

The Journalist & the Murderer

Chapter 16 The Gingerbread Man 327

Taxis & the Meaning of Work

Kae Bang

Chapter 17 In Bad Blood 343

Susan Smith

Brutal Imagination

The Washington Post

Jimmy's World

Ben's World

Volunteer Slavery

Chapter 18 Burning Down 359

The New York Times

Jayson Blair

Michael Finkel

The Truth

6 Unoriginal Sin: On plagiary, murder, bad poetry & other crimes

Chapter 19 Blacker than Thou 381

Rachel Dolezal

Chapter 20 Professor Plum 391

Plagiary

Clark Rockefeller

Gatsby

Chapter 21 Ghostbusters 397

Kaavya Viswanathan

Opal Mehta

Adam Wheeler

William-Henry Ireland

Chapter 22 Michael Brown's Body 411

Trumpism

The Ecstasy of Influence

Conceptual Poetry

Lynching

Christian Ward

Brad Vice

Coda: The Age of Euphemism 431

Acknowledgments 449

Notes 451

Annotated Bibliography 509

Illustration Credits 535

Index 539

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