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

by Kevin Young Narrated by Mirron Willis

Overview

Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, 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 journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from 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. In this brilliant and timely work, Young 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 pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Jonathan Lethem

…enthralling and essential…Bunk is a sort of book that comes along rarely: the encompassing survey of some vast realm of human activity, encyclopedic but also unapologetically subjective. These are often the work of some obsessed scholar or autodidact: Think of Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power, Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, or Gershon Legman's Rationale of the Dirty Joke. The format is out of step with contemporary nonfiction, much of which divides into memoirs certified by their authors' griefs and endurances…or tidy journalistic forays reflecting the one-chapter-and-outline format of a successful book proposal, in which the author's thesis is delivered by the end of 40 pages, then padded with anecdotes and examples. Bunk, a panorama, a rumination and a polemic at once, asks more of the reader. It delivers riches in return…Bunk is a reader's feast, a shaggy, generous tome with a slim volume of devastating aphorisms lurking inside…

Publishers Weekly - Audio

03/26/2018
Actor and audiobook veteran Willis demonstrates a large capacity for vocal nuance in his reading of Young’s history of fraud and fakery in American history. The early chapters cover dense historical topics that may be esoteric to a general audience, but Willis renders the material as approachable as possible. As the book’s focus shifts to more recent instances of fraud, journalistic fabrications, and outright lies by public figures, Young’s overall thesis—that hoaxes often reflect an agenda to manipulate or hijack larger conversations about such issues as race, class, and gender—becomes easier to follow. The highlight of Willis’s performance is his projection of Young’s indignation at Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who posed as African-American and became a civil rights organizer. This is a satisfying audiobook that hooks listeners in the latter half. A Graywolf hardcover. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/14/2017
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. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

[Young’s] scrupulous feel for archival traces — for the urgent materiality of memory — is one of the superpowers he brings to both his poems and nonfiction. The newest example is Bunk, Young’s enthralling and essential new study of our collective American love affair with pernicious and intractable moonshine. . . . Bunk is a sort of book that comes along rarely: the encompassing survey of some vast realm of human activity, encyclopedic but also unapologetically subjective. . . . Bunk, a panorama, a rumination and apolemic at once, asks more of the reader. It delivers riches in return. . . . Bunk is a reader’s feast, a shaggy, generous tome with a slim volume of devastating aphorisms lurking inside; it also shimmers with moments of brief personal testimony."—Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review

“In Bunk, Kevin Young exhaustively tracks our longtime ambivalence toward ‘hoaxes, humbug, plagiarists, phonies, post-facts, and fake news.’ In these pages our founding father isn’t George Washington, who supposedly couldn’t tell a lie, but rather showman P.T. Barnum, who brazenly exhibited an old black woman as Washington’s 161-year-old childhood nurse. . . . There’s so much to enjoy and learn from in this encyclopedic anatomy of American imposture and chicanery.”—The Washington Post

“A wild, incisive, exhilarating tour through Western culture’s sideshows and dark corners. Like a sideshow barker, Young writes with unbridled enthusiasm, a showman’s conviction, and a carny’s canny, telling a story that at times defies belief. And every word of it is true.”—Los Angeles Times

“Kevin Young . . . reflects on hoaxers and events as diverse as P.T. Barnum, Rachel Dolezal, the forged Hitler Diaries, Binjamin Wilkomirski’s fabricated Holocaust memoir, James Frey, Stephen Glass and Lance Armstrong. What could be timelier in the age of post-truth politics, science denial and fake news?”—Newsweek

“[A] fascinating, dense, and hyper-referential look into the strange forms and contours of our indigenous cultural b.s.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Riveting. . . . Young covers, and uncovers, America’s long and varied history of deceptive practices.”—Elle

“[A] thorough examination of two centuries of hoaxing. . . . Original and illuminating.”—BBC Culture

“Brilliant . . . that rare thing, a trove of fresh and persuasive insights. . . . Impeccably, even superhumanly erudite. . . . [Young's] subject, a procession of outlandish, inventive, theatrical, and utterly brazen liars, is inherently entertaining.”—Slate

“Consider Bunk to be an endlessly fascinating fact-check on everything we think we know about integrity.”—Vulture

“[Young’s] copious research, his talents in literary analysis and his associative skills as a poet are on acrobatic display as he argues convincingly that the hoax is all too often an underrecognized mechanism for maintaining white — and to a concurrent extent, male — supremacy. . . . As we enter the second year of the Trump administration . . . this book could scarcely be more timely or useful.”—Chicago Tribune

“Bunk is a fiercely intelligent account of the lies public figures tell us and the lies we tell ourselves, and it’s one of the mostimportant books you’ll read all year.”—Nylon

“Reading Bunk, one may get the sense that Young’s history of the secret themes of our society has suddenly moved out of the shadows and into full view. It’s equal parts enlightening and unnerving.”—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“Young . . . assumes the daunting task of cataloguing America’s obsession with deception . . . [and] diligently explores how marginalization of 'the other' breathes life into deceit. . . . Bunk is the thrilling fun house at the state fair one wishes to never exit.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“This enlightening, entertaining and timely tome is just what we need to understand and protect against the pervasive cynicism that threatens our nation to our very core.”—Detroit Free Press

“Young entertains with his erudition and solid facts, his original thinking and impeccable narrative writing skills.”—KMUW

“[A] profoundly erudite new study of the ways truthiness, as Stephen Colbert used to call it, travels through America’s fabric.”—Literary Hub

“Thick and information-laden as the internet cacophony, Young’s book proves a worthy and exhaustingly researched read.”—Paste

“Bunk is a barefisted reckoning with American culture, an extension of sorts of his whip-smart book-length essay The Gray Album that coils, swerves, and diverts out at right angles from itself. . . . Young is a pure essayist in the vein of Emerson and Montaigne. Reading Young, you feel like you’re making connections along with him, and it’s exciting, at times flabbergasting, to peel back the layers of the American psyche together.”—Jeffery Gleaves, The Paris Review Staff Picks

“Young is a fine poet—incoming poetry editor of The New Yorker, no less—and his often recursive, textured prose is the perfect delivery for the cyclical nature of literary lies.”—The Millions

“Young goes over this fakery at great length, not simply to reveal the origins of fake news today but to demonstrate something deeper, which he calls a ‘narrative crisis.’ . . . Young writes from the perspective of his vocation as a poet and with the commitment to what can be understood as poetic truth.”—New York Review of Books

“[Kevin Young is] second to none in his ability to make unlikely pop cultural connections and bring in a vast and complex sense of history.”—Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“Expansive. . . . We have yet to see what forms may materialize to counter the rise of fake news. They will have to offer different emotions with different pleasures. Until such a counter-genre emerges, the best we can do is, like Young, provide a history of how we got here.”—The New Inquiry

“Kevin Young’s magisterial study, Bunk . . . should set many back on their heels. . . . Choosing to read [this] book that systematically—and with a great deal of entertainment—exposes and explains the promulgation of 'fake news' would be a perfect way to resist the dumbing down of America.”—Signature Reads

“Thoroughly researched and consistently illuminating. . . . Bunk serves as a necessary reference book you can dip in and out of as you like, or else turn to any time the president says anything.”—The Stranger

“A powerful, far-reaching read.”—BookPage

“As exhaustive as its subtitle: part survey of modern imposture, part detective story about the origins of American fakery. . . . It’s an important book for 2017, not only because ‘fake news’ is a part of the zeitgeist, but because public discourse about white supremacy and political hucksterism suffers from citizens’ short memory. . . . Bunk is a consistently incisive look at the nature of American imposture and epistemology itself: How do we know what we know, how do we learn? How do we undo what we learn, and how do we avoid making the same mistakes?”—Harvard Magazine

“If you're ready for a riveting lesson on a loaded subject, immerse yourself in award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young’s Bunk.”—Elle.com

“A persuasive and exhaustive examination of the history and ubiquity of the hoax.”—4Columns

“Young chronicles a distinctly American brand of deception in this history of hoaxers, fabricators, liars, and imposters. . . . [He] astutely declares the hoax a frequent metaphor for a ‘deep-seated cultural wish’ that confirms prejudicial ideas and stereotypes. . . . 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.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“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. . . . Compelling and eye-opening.”—Booklist, starred review

“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. . . . 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. This dense and wide-ranging critique offers a fascinating view of the impact of fraud on truth.”—Library Journal, starred review

“A fascinating, well-researched look at the many ways Americans hoodwink each other, often about race.”—Kirkus Reviews

Library Journal - Audio

02/15/2018
Young (director, Schomburg Ctr. for Research in Black Culture; The Grey Album) presents an important, timely history of hoaxes and journalistic duplicity. He begins with the 1835 newspaper story reporting winged men on the moon and carries into today's embarrassing preoccupation with blatant lies, hearsay, rumors, and ridiculous conspiracy theories spewed by the lunatic fringe. Listeners will learn about P.T. Barnum's creation of the huckster and the con man, spiritualist scams, unusual faked physical deformities, fairy hoaxes, bearded women frauds, and, of course, the never-ending litany of UFO and alien deceptions. The stories also cover the literary deceits of invented memoir, Rachel Dolezal's identity theft, and the purposeful abuse of history. The forgeries, swindles, cons, cheats, and plagiarism continue with today's current abuse of journalism by the blatant lies and the invention of fake backstories, as exemplified by the clearly biased coverage of Fox News. Mirron Willis's solid, clearly enunciated, and steady paced reading helps listeners focus on this deeply researched but embarrassing legacy. This densely detailed work will help listeners understand why people often form strikingly strong opinions from minimal information. VERDICT Essential for all libraries, especially university libraries supporting journalism and public affairs curricula. ["This dense and wide-ranging critique offers a fascinating view of the impact of fraud on truth": LJ 9/15/17 starred review of the Graywolf hc.; a National Book Critics Circle 2018 nominee.]—Dale Farris, Groves, TX

Library Journal

★ 09/15/2017
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

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Young systematically tackles the history of intentional misdirection in the U.S., exploring how deceit has harmed us through lenses such as popular culture, journalism, literature, race, history, and more. Mirron Willis's narration drives the prose from P.T. Barnum to Lance Armstrong and to President Trump, keeping listeners attuned with a deep voice and skillful pacing. Young's writing can drag and leave the reader unsure of where book is going, but Willis's command of the text and tonal emphasis helps provide guidance. Willis has the ability to vocally draw out the drama and tension of any scene or description, making the audiobook an exciting listen that will leave listeners more skeptical and critical about what they read and hear. L.E. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2017-08-10
Is flimflammery, like jazz, a pure product of America? So wonders New Yorker poetry editor Young (Blues Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems 1995-2015, 2016, etc.), adding another Americanism to the mix: Jim Crow.For whatever reason, Americans have always thrilled at being conned: thus televangelists and bullshit artists. Thus Herman Melville's great novel The Confidence-Man, and thus the result of the most recent presidential election. By Young's vigorous, allusive account, the suckerdom whose numbers are added to every minute has no end of choices when it comes to shopping for bunkum. What makes this book a valuable addition to the literature—otherwise, it might just be an update to Daniel Boorstin's half-century-old study The Image—is Young's attention to the racial component: P.T. Barnum built his fortune, after all, on the backs of people like Joice Heth, billed as a supposed 161-year-old wet nurse to George Washington, and putative cannibals from the South Pacific, and the like. Much bunkum had to do with the clash of cultures and races, from the mundane to the fabulous. Young's wide-ranging text takes in not just circus sideshows, but also the literary/journalistic fabulations of JT LeRoy, Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, Lance Armstrong, and other exemplars of what Young calls the "Age of Euphemism." Oh, and Rachel Dolezal, too, who infamously tried to pass as black not so long ago: "Did Dolezal really fool those black folks around her? I have a strange feeling she didn't, that many simply humored her. You have to do this with white people, from time to time." If that doesn't stir up identity-politics conflict, then nothing will….A little harsh here, a little overstated there, but all in all a fascinating, well-researched look at the many ways Americans hoodwink each other, often about race.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170156597
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	11/14/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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