Customer Reviews

Faking It

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

William Ian Miller's Faking it is a wonderfully learned and perspicacious excursion through the craggy terrain of social pretense and role playing. Through skilful and charming deployment of his wry wit, relentlessly honest powers of observation, and superhuman depth and breadth of knowledge Miller teaches us almost as much about intellectual history, Jane Austen, and The Bible as he teaches us about ourselves. Those who are persnickety about keeping up appearances of authenticity may find many of Miller's insights about our powers and propensities as charlatans and posers to be better left uncovered, many of the embarrassing secrets Miller lets out to be better kept in the bag. But from his searing interpretations of Jesus' teachings on hypocrisy, to his musings about how anxiety provoking it would be to converse with Hamlet, to his beautifully crafted and original discussion of the fakery of apology, Miller never fails to delight and illuminate. He is dazzling in his performances as literary critic, historian, philosopher, comedian and story teller. Whether he is faking this remarkable facility in so many roles really doesn't matter. He entertains, enlightens, persuades and provokes us either way.

Solomon Frye
Toronto, Ontario.

I'm all too aware of how many day to day interactions are tinged with falsehood. Miller has made an important step in understanding fakery's many facets, but I think another step or two remains to be made.

His presentation starts with religious fakery, especially the self-righteous hypocrisy addressed in Jesus's invitation to cast the first stone. Miller also uses gospel for examples condemning legalistic obedience to ritual observance of the Sabbath, when it conflicts with common humanity in healing woman blind for eighteen years. Then, Miller asks whether it would really have cost so much to wait one more day after all those years, to avoid working on the holy day, or whether the blind woman was bait in a philosophical trap for the Pharisees. Then, in ch.6, Miller see-saws again on religious formalism, showing how it can both be mindless involvement for the nominally observant with their thoughts elsewhere, and also a neatly paved and familiar path to guide the truly devout. He addresses similar splits between what we in fact feel vs. what we wish to be thought to feel, using examples from the business world, Jane Austen, exposure to "culture," and many other familiar experiences.

Too often, though, I found that his discussion missed critical points. For example, he addresses sublime experiences in the natural or man-made world - and the need to be seen experiencing the sublime. Part of his example, though, falls short of a general experience. Yes, some people fret over the esthetics and mechanics of acquiring the perfect photographic record of the moment. At least as many people, I suspect, want something just good enough to jog their memory of the experience, and some few take positive pleasure in merging the camera and context into a creative expression. In many places, he succumbs to a fallacy that weakens many other philosophers' work as well. Although he quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald's statement that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function," Miller rarely acknowledges that people in fact do it. Someone can be truly devout and still visibly attentive to rituals that have nothing to do with his devotion. A parent can be sincere in disciplining a child, at the same time that she synthesizes a metered level of severity that could be greater or less than she actually feels. A lover can care passionately about the beloved's happiness, but still throw in a few gestures of visible caring to shore up the less visible but more profund ones. Miller's black and white extremes demonstrate the points he wishes to make, but more time spent on the shades of gray would make his discussion more relevant to daily life.

I found only one real error in his presentation, but it's one that I feel must be addressed. Miller addresses Rogaine, implants, Botox, and even Viagra (at least in some of its uses) as medical support for fakery - for being seen in a way that one is natively not. I can go along with that, as long as we're dealing in broad and imprecise generalities. His error lies in lumping antidepressant users in the category making of "life easier, if not as interesting, if they use chemical aids to help them mellow out." Miller must know that clinical depression can be a crippling, even fatal disease, but trivializes "depressed people [as] down in the dumps pessimists, people given to ready annoyance...," and antidepressants as a niceness issue. Would he also characterize antibiotics as tools for faking others into thinking your immune system was stronger than it is, or an epileptic's seizure medication as some kind of social supplement? Prof. Miller: suicidal depression is not "interesting"; being too ill to keep a roof over your head is not a mere "annoyance."

That blunder undermined much of the good elsewhere in the book, at least for me. He mentions the convenience of "faking" one's dozens of roles in daily life, making it possible to go to the store, doctor, and post office without having to reinvent each transaction de novo each time, but I think he under-values these kinds of faking it. He oversimplifies the conscious dualities of life, and never examines the point at which balance shades into Orwellian double-think. Miller's discussion is wide-ranging and well-researched, as far as it goes. Perhaps his next effort will take it as far as it needs to go.

-- wiredweird

A cogent and well-written essay on the layers of falsity in society. The examples presented of real-life situations focus the abstract into a more tangible and personal level, forcing the reader to reexamine how he or she is and has been "faking it". It isn't just another sociological essay; it is an interdisplinary analysis of our society that incorporates philosophy, literature, theater, pop-culture, history and sociology. "Faking It" is a must read for anyone who has ever questioned their actions or felt alienated by their attempts to self-analyze. I'm not paying lip service or faking my appreciation- it is a truly provacative work. Kudos.

Although at times a bit overly cynical for my tastes, this was a highly entertaining read. It was erudite, witty, and very, very originally observant of human behavior and motivation. I recognized myself throughout, sometimes painfully so and sometimes amusingly so. I especially enjoyed the skewering of academic fakery, surely the most profoundly comical of all forms. A great read.

The reader is impressed with author Miller's wide familiarity with Western literature (I had sold Jane Austen short)in making his points as well as his ability to employ an analytical legal mind to question "conventional wisdom" - even taking on Jesus's teachings in this regard. Miller's willingness to examine his own motives and inclinations to "fake it" are refreshing. Such self examination gives the book a sense of legitimacy and veracity. I would have liked to see more in-depth discussion of the the search for the "self." Still, the book has value as a guide to establishing (and recognizing) authenticity - an important characteristic of mental health. By the end of the book, I was getting a slight sense of a parsing of the subject a bit too finely - like the Chaucer character he mentioned who could divide flatulence into parts for analysis. But this effort is much more than hot air or showing off. I left it with valuable insights into myself, and Professor Miller.

The unique genius of Professor Miller's work lies not in his ability to give new information to the reader. Indeed, most of his observations are instantly recognized by any perceptive reader as being things he or she already knew about the world. The genius of Faking It, as with his other works, is his ability to recognize fundamental truths that most people never think about at all, or would prefer not to, and to organize these truths into a coherent system by which human behavior can be analyzed and understood.
I strongly recommend this book!

This is a really bad book. It applies a few generic psychoanalytic insights to everything, borrows heavily from Zizek in places, especially in its reflections on Judaism, without anywhere acknowledging the debt, and the "wry wit" is not that witty at all, but indulgent and infinitely self-regarding. The relation between Faking It's clever cover and its preening, self-pleasuring insides is one of pure, authentic fakery.

Of course, there is utility value in the practice of lying. Everyone knows that, especially children who have not yet learned they are not the only one on the planet, and their self serving rationalizations for not telling the truth are subscribed to by few. The author seems to think that applying moronic wit to the lies he perceives as being all around him somehow makes them OK, harmless, even essential in the functioning of society. This point of view, based on a level somewhere between an elementary school playground and a middle school boy's locker room, is disturbing, particularly coming from an educator. The alternative view, and, to (hopefully) most of us, is that those who trumpet dishonesty are best paid no mind.