Bunk

Starred review from August 14, 2017
Poet and author Young (The Grey Album) chronicles a distinctly American brand of deception in this history of hoaxers, fabricators, liars, and imposters. Young traces the tradition of journalistic duplicity from an 1835 newspaper story reporting winged men on the moon to the fabrications by the New Republic’s Stephen Glass in the late 1990s. He explores forgeries and falsifications in literature, including the exaggerated claims of James Frey in his memoir A Million Little Pieces and the wholesale creation of false identities, providing the example of J.T. LeRoy, allegedly a child prostitute turned novelist but later revealed to be the literary persona of writer Laura Albert. While many of these hoaxes will be familiar to those with a decent grasp of American history and current events, there are plenty of obscure examples as well, such as the 1941 emergence of the nine-year-old poet-prodigy Fern Gravel, charmingly declared “the lost Sappho of Iowa” by the New York Times, who was later revealed to be the brainchild of author James Norman Hall. Young explores the many instances where the hoax intersects with race and racism, notably P.T. Barnum’s exploitation of the supposed centenarian Joice Heth, a black nursemaid of George Washington, and the more recent instance of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman pretending to be black, who led her local chapter of the NAACP. Using these examples, Young astutely declares the hoax a frequent metaphor for a “deep-seated cultural wish” that confirms prejudicial ideas and stereotypes. While the book suffers a bit from its glut of examples, Young’s remarks on race and his comparison of Trump and Barnum, both of whom gained power from spectacle, in the book’s coda are well worth sifting through the drier material.

Starred review from October 15, 2017
As we adjust to life with a president who plays fast and loose with the truth and whose backstory arouses growing skepticism, this examination of the long and colorful history of hoaxes and cons is most welcome. Well before the Internet helped fuel and spread half-truths and outright deceptions, people have perpetrated frauds in various forms. Award-winning poet, scholar, and writer Young (Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 19952015, 2016) examines the American roots of fraud and its particular ties to racial anxieties, from P. T. Barnum's display of Joice Heth, the alleged 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington; to Susan Smith's tale of a black man kidnapping and killing her children; to Rachel Dolezal's masquerade as a black woman. Young traces the history of freak shows, seances, spirit photography, fake memoirs, and reality TV, exploring the motives of hoaxers (fame, greed, thrill) and the anxieties of each era that led to believers' gullibility. Young presents a rogue's gallery, including Grey Owl, Bernie Madoff, and Lance Armstrong, paying particular attention to the especially heinous frauds of journalists, including Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair. Young closes with an examination of today's constant bombardment of intertwined facts and factoids and the need for each of us to try to suss out the truth. Compelling and eye-opening.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 15, 2017

Fake news and alternative facts have a long and complex history in American culture. Young, an award-winning poet and director of the New York Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, explores the deep roots of hoaxing in entertainment, literature, journalism, sports, and public life. Opening with a discussion of P.T. Barnum's argument that people enjoy being fooled, Young examines the variety of hoaxes that permeate daily life. He looks at the development of the penny press in the 1800s and a mix of stories, including detailed reports of life on the moon, that made it challenging for readers to sort truth from fiction. Young draws on many examples throughout history to argue that the false presentations of forgers, plagiarists, euphemism-wielding public officials, and other purveyors of fraud distort our understanding of the world. He untangles both the subtle and overt forms of racism embedded in perverted presentations of reality. The final chapter touches on the current "post-fact" world and its rejection of expertise, raising important questions about how we can know the truth. VERDICT This dense and wide-ranging critique offers a fascinating view of the impact of fraud on truth. American studies scholars and readers interested in contemporary culture will appreciate it.--Judy Solberg, Sacramento, CA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2017

It's especially interesting to hear about hoaxes, humbug, and more when the author is multi-award-winning poet/critic Young, also director of NYPL's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Here, he presents the hoax as a quintessentially American phenomenon, with race the most damning hoax of all.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2017

Fake news and alternative facts have a long and complex history in American culture. Young, an award-winning poet and director of the New York Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, explores the deep roots of hoaxing in entertainment, literature, journalism, sports, and public life. Opening with a discussion of P.T. Barnum's argument that people enjoy being fooled, Young examines the variety of hoaxes that permeate daily life. He looks at the development of the penny press in the 1800s and a mix of stories, including detailed reports of life on the moon, that made it challenging for readers to sort truth from fiction. Young draws on many examples throughout history to argue that the false presentations of forgers, plagiarists, euphemism-wielding public officials, and other purveyors of fraud distort our understanding of the world. He untangles both the subtle and overt forms of racism embedded in perverted presentations of reality. The final chapter touches on the current "post-fact" world and its rejection of expertise, raising important questions about how we can know the truth. VERDICT This dense and wide-ranging critique offers a fascinating view of the impact of fraud on truth. American studies scholars and readers interested in contemporary culture will appreciate it.--Judy Solberg, Sacramento, CA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.