Writing a new page in the surprisingly long history of literary deceit, Impostors examines a series of literary hoaxes, deceptions that involved flagrant acts of cultural appropriation. This book looks at authors who posed as people they were not, in order to claim a different ethnic, class, or other identity. These writers were, in other words, literary usurpers and appropriators who trafficked in what Christopher L. Miller terms the “intercultural hoax.”
Author(s): Christopher L. Miller
Edition: e-book
Publisher: The University Of Chicago Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Commentary: Rigoberta Menchu,...,Howard Zinn,...,flim-flamers.
Pages: 253
Tags: Literary Criticism: General Literary, Forgeries And Mystifications, Hoaxes French Literature: History And Criticism, African Literature (French): History And Criticism, American Literature: History And Criticism, African Literature (French), American Literature, French Literature, Hoaxes Literary, Forgeries And Mystifications
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Introduction......Page 14
Slave Narratives and White Lies......Page 34
The Forrest and the Tree......Page 35
Danny Santiago and the Ethics of Ethnicity......Page 38
Go Ask Amazon......Page 42
“I Never Saw It As a Hoax”: JT LeRoy......Page 46
Margaret B. Jones, Misha Defonseca, and “Stolen Suffering”......Page 51
Minority Literature and Postcolonial Theory......Page 55
What Is a (French) Author?......Page 58
The French Paradox and the Francophone Problem......Page 61
The Real, the Romantic, and the Fake in the Nineteenth Century......Page 64
The Single-Use Hoax: Diderot’s La Religieuse......Page 67
Mérimée’s Illyrical Illusions......Page 72
Bakary Diallo: Fausse-Bonté......Page 87
Elissa Rhaïs, Literacy, and Identity......Page 90
Sex and Temperament in Postwar Hoaxing: Boris Vian and Raymond Queneau......Page 94
Did Camara Lie? Two African Classics Between Canonicity and Oblivion......Page 103
Gary/Ajar: The Hoaxing of the Goncourt Prize and the Making-Cute of the Immigrant......Page 117
Who Is Chimo? Sex, Lies, and Death in the Banlieue......Page 133
Conclusion to Part 2......Page 137
Introduction......Page 138
Before “Paul Smaïl”......Page 142
Vivre me tue (Living Kills Me, or Smile)......Page 149
The Popular Press Reads Vivre me tue......Page 160
Smaïl Speaks (by Fax)......Page 165
The Leak......Page 167
Did “Hundreds” of Readers Write to Paul Smaïl?......Page 170
Truth and Lies à la Léger......Page 174
The Scholars Weigh In......Page 175
Azouz Begag’s Outrage and the Right to Write......Page 180
Reading: A Choice?......Page 185
The Parts He Played......Page 188
Conclusion......Page 192
Notes......Page 196
Index......Page 246