On Fiction Writing and Liars

Last night my professor said of an author's magazine interview, "of course it's hard to know how much of what she says is genuine, since all writers are liars anyway." Edgar Poe once ran a fake news article about the arrival of a hot-air balloon from across the Atlantic, and gathered huge crowds to buy the paper in which the story appeared. We all know, of course, that writers of fiction must fabricate characters, plots, and settings, as part of the creative process, but it's often difficult to tell to what extent the fabrication extends to the writers' real lives. Do we, as readers of fiction, allow some lying from our authors outside their fiction? Is it possible to know whether truly great fiction writers are lying or not? Perhaps we don't care, as long as the writing is good. Maybe the genuine and the fake are indistinguishable for some people. One wonders which came first, though--the lying, or the fiction writing? It's quite likely that I've been unable to write fiction because I've been unable to lie. Perhaps I could take some tips from Poe.

Pictured is (possibly) Poe in his coffin, from www.celebritymorgue.com. It's quite likely to be as fake as Poe was.

Academic Fraud

Apparently there are repercussions for lying about your academic record!

From the Southeast Missourian:

JACKSON, Mo. (AP) -- A 22-year-old woman has admitting submitting a phony transcript to Southeast Missouri State University.

The Southeast Missourian reported that Danielle Feagin of Malden pleaded guilty to forgery charges on Monday. Sentencing will be May 24.

Feagin told a judge she committed the forgery in hopes of gaining quicker acceptance to Southeast Missouri State. The transcript showed Feagin had a 4.0 grade point average and 89 credit hours at Three Rivers Community College. Actually, she had a 2.4 GPA and 37 credits.

Prosecutors are recommending a suspended sentence and probation.


It's perhaps lamentable that her goal was only Southeast Missouri State--who knows what kind of attention she'd get if she had tried to get into an Ivy League or a UC with a forged transcript. One wonders how many people try to fake transcripts, and also how many people get away with it.

The Cancer-Faker

This woman, Kelly Von Lehmden, raised thousands of dollars to fight her breast cancer, and was later discovered to have falsified documents to fake the disease. Now there is concern for her handicapped son, who may be a victim of her Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. In our age of pathologizing all aberrent behavior, we seem to treat criminals as greater victims than their victims often are. Is this woman mentally ill? Was she simply unable to prevent herself from forging medical records? Is this scandal enough to satisfy her incessant need for attention, or will she continue to pull stunts like this until someone really gets hurt?

The Forger Family

One of the most recent major art forgery operations was carried out by the Greenhalgh family: artist son Shaun and his elderly parents, George and Olive. It seems that there is a psychological difference between a single person who copies artworks (whether for monetary gain or not) and a group of people all committing a fraud together. This article claims that the group did not carry out these frauds for money, but rather due to "resentment of the art market." Shaun's obvious skill suggests that this statement could be true--certainly he could make some sort of living selling copies of great works of art--but these three wanted to undermine the whole art market. Still, a single piece successfully sold and then revealed to be a fake would signal their resentment at least as effectively as several pieces successfully sold and never discovered to be forgeries. I'm not convinced that they were trying to make a point. The art market has always been ridiculous and has never been fair, just like every other market. I'm mostly just certain that they were trying to make money.

Lawsuits and Plagiarism

People like Blair Hornstine, pictured left, are a waste of everyone's time. This disgustingly sappy pro-Blair website discusses the plight of poor Blair Hornstine, who sued a school district for 2.7 million dollars because she was forced to share valedictorian honors with a student who didn't get to take his classes from home or skip P.E. I'm sure there's not much talk in that site about the fact that she plagiarized school newspaper articles and Harvard rescinded her admission. I have nothing but contempt for fakers like these, people who will live their entire lives as lies (what kind of congenital medical condition do you have, Blair?) and cut any corner possible instead of legitimately working and studying like almost everyone else has to. I don't know her, and perhaps I'm doing her some injustice, but I do know that she plagiarized, and a person who plagiarizes is certainly capable of other forms of fraud as well. She will probably continue to succeed, unless some sort of cosmic karma really does exist.

Cheaper than the Real One...

Today my spam email directed me to this website, unapologetically advertising the best false diplomas money can buy. The email encouraged me to "change [my] life a bit with our novelty documents" and to "just take a chance." For me, the potential repercussions of this type of lie would be crippling, both emotionally and professionally. Is it impossible to succeed without lying about yourself? Do we all have to make ourselves look better than we are, even to the extent of falsifying documents? Also, what kind of laws are in place against this type of fraud? I wonder whether an employer can sue an employee if he finds out that he was lying on his résumé. I hope he can.

Art Forgery

Forgery, perhaps only because I am more and more interested in it, seems to be of increasing interest to the public. An exhibition of the works by the subject of the film F for Fake, Elmyr de Hory, is currently on display in Minnesota. De Hory's protege and inheritor (oddly named Forgy), has launched the show of his "friend's" works, including one authentic artist's work and dozens of de Hory's fakes. This article discusses the relationship between the two. I think I admire art forgers, for their artistic skill mostly, but I also wonder how satisfying it can be to copy someone else's work all your life. Is money a motivation, or pride, or something else? Perhaps I should start trying to write "lost" Gaddis novels and see how it goes. Somehow there's a difference between that and an art forgery.