There is a Quillette article on the literary frauds of the 1970's Go Ask Beatrice. Sometimes the works were fictionalised accounts of real information, with the distinction not very clearly noted in order to at least contribute to an impression that the events had actually happened. Others were flat frauds.
I would add that Elie Wiesel's Night seems to be "based on a true story" rather than actual reporting, and remind folks of the Christian comedian Mike Warnke's original start among evangelicals was an entirely made-up account of himself as a satanist in college, The Satan Seller. I knew people who regarded his advice on how to exorcise demons possessing their friends and family as entirely authoritative and Biblical.
ReplyDeleteTo be as fair to Warnke as possible, he did spend a good portion of his later career trying to keep attention on the gospel and as far from satanism as he could, though unfortunately after everything fell apart he seems to have drifted back to that. I remember seeing a newsletter of his (not sure how I wound up with it) in which he asserted that battling satanism was still a ministry of his. Not exactly good to his wives either. Great speaker.
I wonder if the 70's were as especially bad as the Quillette article proposes. I haven't been keeping score, but there seems to have been a steady stream of scandals over the years; e.g. retracted NYT fake series about drug use, fake ethnological stories about South American Indians, fake biographies, fake political stories (piled high), and I am disinclined to believe the tell-all stories about the high and mighty.
The History Guy (on YouTube) did an episode yesterday on a British woman who faked being nobility for most her life in the late 1700s, even being convicted for theft and transported to the United States shortly before the Revolution (she was in Boston at the time of the Tea Party), and who was still able to con folks even after her ruse was well publicized.
ReplyDeleteChristopher B's comment makes me wonder about the psychology of a person who can commit to a fraud like pretending to be royalty. How do they go about approaching every situation dishonestly presenting themselves? I've wondered if they convince themselves they deserve to be the person they're pretending to be.
ReplyDeleteI think one would have to at minimum believe that other people didn't deserve honors more than you did.
ReplyDeleteSo, like Daniel Lumis from Dragnet, who insisted that everyone call him "Mister" out of respect, and expected even the cops to respect his my-wants-over-all-else attitude.
ReplyDeleteYour question, Deevs, leads me to wonder about claims to be royalty even when fully established by family trees and coats of arms. How dare anyone make such a claim?
ReplyDeleteWRT Deevs' question:
ReplyDeleteWhatever is not nailed down is mine.
What I can pry loose is not nailed down.
-- Collis P. Huntingdon (Or perhaps David Starr Jordan)