We've all read the news accounts of one fake memoir after another coming to light: fake gang members, fake Holocaust survivors, fake soldiers, fake Native Americans, fake ex-cons. Publishers are so desperate for sales that they are attracting record numbers of unscrupulous authors who will concoct the most grandiose claims in order to achieve success. Customers are up in arms, publishers cry innocence, editors shrug and the authors are unavailable for comment. The debate rages: who's really to blame..........
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We've all read the news accounts of one fake memoir after another coming to light: fake gang members, fake Holocaust survivors, fake soldiers, fake Native Americans, fake ex-cons. Publishers are so desperate for sales that they are attracting record numbers of unscrupulous authors who will concoct the most grandiose claims in order to achieve success. Customers are up in arms, publishers cry innocence, editors shrug and the authors are unavailable for comment. The debate rages: who's really to blame? The authors, editors, publishers? Is it the fault of the readers themselves, their insatiable hunger for sensationalism? Is it Oprah?
I say: Yes and no. It's none of the above, and all. The real culprit is our absurd notion of authenticity itself, our obsession with it. Like it or not, nowadays just about everybody is doing the Authenticity Hustle.
We all judge the relative authenticity of other writers all the time, whether we are conscious of the process or not. How we judge this authenticity usually boils down to which personality-manufacturing device that person has chosen. Our opinion is ultimately based upon how skilled we think that person is in the art of self-invention.
Too often we confuse truth with authenticity. We think the latter can replace the former. We believe, wrongly, that certain personality-manufacturing methods are more authentic than others. The fact is that we are all, on some level, artifice: the key difference is that some of us don't lie about it, so we resent when others not only lie about it but are rewarded handsomely by an industry that considers itself superior to the rest of us, that looks down on our naively honest efforts. The fake memoirists are liars, but they succeeded because they constructed a plausible enough authenticity to fool the dulled and dollar-eyed gatekeepers at various publishing conglomerates. Forget all the phony hand-wringing and garment-rending by the publishers and media about fake memoirs. This is not a tragedy, it's a match made in heaven. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were never more gracefully coordinated.
This cult of authenticity extends to "world literature" too--those Epcot centers of guided ethnic tourism that make the overwhelmingly white worlds of publishing and media feel better about themselves. When I used to scour thrift shops for records I'd see hundreds of those "exotic" albums from the 50s and 60s, with a wacky guy in brown face shaking a maraca: "The Crazy Sounds Old Mexico!" and under that, in small type: "featuring Sy Schmermershlitz and the CBS timpani orchestra."
A lot of modern "ethnic" literature is very much like those Mariachi records of the 50s, full of lovely violins and cellos and harps, occasionally broken by a ten-second conga break. You take a female John Updike and put some curry-scented insoles in her loafers, and voila!--instant authenticity. It makes me just as sick to see black authors being cordoned off as "urban," as if the topics they write about or the urban experience itself were somehow limited to "people of color," to use another disgusting term.
The authenticity hustle extends to the indie/alt/underground/outsider lit world too. Look around and ask yourself: How many Bukowskis do you know? Burroughses? Kerouacs? Hunckes? Hemingway left such a huge mark on the literary culture that it wasn't until around the time JFK was killed that Serious Writers stopped writing about bullfighting, for Christ's sake. Some writers even took their obsession with Hemingway to new heights, and made great careers for themselves by setting up shop inside Hemingway's footprint. Norman Mailer. Charles Bukowski. Countless other, less famous authors.
And now a new generation of barstool bards staggers under the same maudlin neon lights erected for the premiere of Barfly, too many of them struggling to prove to the world that his own authenticity is more authentically authentic than somebody else's. Bukowski was a groundbreaking poet and one of the greatest American humorists, right up there with Mark Twain and Preston Sturges, but he is remembered and revered by his acolytes mostly for his authenticity. He is "real" to them, and they will become quite upset if you dare challenge that. Never mind that Bukowski never lived on skid row, pushed himself constantly on editors, never refused a chance to socialize with the rich and famous, was almost completely dependent on women, and worked for the government: he still persists in the popular imagination as a fierce loner, an outsider, a stud, an iconoclast. I still love the guy, but when it comes to the authenticity hustle there was nobody better than Bukowski.
Hemingway once famously said, "A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl." That's my biggest gripe about the authenticity hustle: with few exceptions it's a whole stinking aviary of bloody owls. I don't want to read any more bloody owl novels, bloody owl memoirs, bloody owl stories or poetry. Give me light, humor, sex, colors, friction--and yes, please give me the truth, the very best truth that is within you, the truest truth you can possibly stand--anything but that plodding, dull, despairing grime of mass-manufactured authenticity.
I recently had a heated exchange with a correspondent: what did I mean by this "Typism" thing? What the hell were the Blacksmiths For Literary Progress? Who was I trying to kid? Was I serious? Another bloody owl. I refused to give a straight answer--in part because I always bite the finger that jabs at me, but also because I honestly don't know how to respond to the spitting hostility most people exhibit towards ambiguity. The finger-jabbers demand answers, they want to know: are you for real?
My answer: No, cupcake, I'm not real--I'm a glass of Cool Whip on the deck of the Lusitania. And while we're on the subject, Who are you?
Maybe I'm too old to get it. Maybe I'll always be a wallflower in the dance halls of the great authenticity hustle. So be it. I've always been serious but I've never been a bloody owl as far as I know, and don't plan on becoming one now. How about you: are you a bloody owl, stuck out there on that dance floor, looking for a way off? I can't tell you where the exit is, because it's different for everybody. But a few hundred years ago some guy named Bill came pretty close when he wrote, 'To thine own self be true.' We've all got to face that naked lunch at the end of our fork eventually, we just don't have to wear a fedora and shoot heroin while we're doing it. Or, for that matter, write a bogus memoir saying we did.
For more of Tim's musings, check out his blog. More information about Tim's books, writing and video work can be found at his website.
Last update : 08-04-2008 13:50
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