My Life as a Fake [Paperback]

Peter Carey (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vintage International | Publication Date: January 4, 2005

Fiendishly devious and addictively readable, Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake is a moral labyrinth constructed around the uneasy relationship between literature and lying. In steamy, fetid Kuala Lumpur in 1972, Sarah Wode-Douglass, the editor of a London poetry journal, meets a mysterious Australian named Christopher Chubb. Chubb is a despised literary hoaxer, carting around a manuscript likely filled with deceit. But in this dubious manuscript Sarah recognizes a work of real genius. But whose genius? As Sarah tries to secure the manuscript, Chubb draws her into a fantastic story of imposture, murder, kidnapping, and exile–a story that couldn’t be true unless its teller were mad. My Life as a Fake is Carey at his most audacious and entertaining.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"My Life as a Fake is so confidently brilliant, so economical yet lively in its writing, so tightly fitted and continuously startling." –John Updike, The New Yorker

“Ingenious . . . Carey is as diabolical as the hoaxes that his book includes.” — The New York Times

"Brisk, relentlessly prankish. . . . A virtuoso amalgam of styles, simultaneously a literary conundrum of the Borges variety, an exotic adventure tale evocative of both the settings and the narrative methods of Conrad, and a horror story derived from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein." –The New York Times Book Review

"A wholly absorbing, bizarrely madcap comedy and a telling commentary on the sometimes baffling sources of art. . . . Though fiction, the book is anything but fake. It's truth, beauty and comedy wrapped in one sprightly package." –Chicago Tribune

“We have a great novelist living on the planet with us, and his name is Peter Carey."
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Circling from the real to the imaginary and back is as happily perplexing as a drawing by M.C. Escher. . . . Carey can bring a character to life, give him a voice and a history and a psychological topography, in a single paragraph." –The New York Review of Books

"No other Australian writer in our time has succeeded as well as Peter Carey in writing novels that compel the attention of a world-wide audience. His work . . . occupies a high plane of literary brilliance." –The Boston Globe

“Peter Carey’s new novel comes like a monsoon after drought. It is a magnificent, poetic contemplation of the lying, fakery and insincerity inherent in the act of artistic creation. . . . It’s a charismatically furious piece of work, brilliantly meshing its ethical and artistic debate with a rich human drama.” –The Times (UK)

“Reads like the impossible offspring of a fictional ménage-à-trois involving Pale Fire, Lord Jim, and Our Man in Havana. . . . A fabulous book in the original sense of the term--and in the other one, too." –The Atlantic Monthly
 
“In book after book, Peter Carey has proven that he's incapable of writing a dull page. . . . He’s one of the greatest storytellers alive. . . . A dazzling narrative.” –The Christian Science Monitor

“Fast, furious and fantastical. . . . Carey is Australia's finest living novelist.” –The Guardian

"Carey is that rare artist brave enough to flee success, a tactic that underlies his dazzling track record. Each of his novels sets him a different challenge; in each, he excels. A triumph in its own right, My Life as a Fake leaves us wondering how he's going to delight and disconcert us in his next book." –St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"My Life as a Fake is the real thing." –Time

"Complex and masterful. . . . A haunting story whose surreal events are as captivating and memorable as the misguided aspirations of its characters." –Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"In My Life as a Fake, Peter Carey has created a novel that is captivating and haunting, and, in the end, sinfully delightful. For both longtime readers and those coming to his work for the first time, it's a book not to miss." –Richmond Times-Dispatch

"Great rollicking fun. . . . A dazzling, beautifully detailed, intellectually energetic book." –The News & Observer (Raleigh)

"My Life as a Fake dazzles the reader with heady ideas and literary reference points (à la Frankenstein and Pale Fire), then catapults us into madcap action. . . . [Carey] exudes a hallucinatory realism that makes imaginary universes feel concrete and believable." –The Village Voice

"A devilishly engrossing meditation on illusion. . . . My Life as a Fake [is] an ingenious homage to the power of the imagination and to Carey's ability to create–and connect–worlds within worlds." –The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

About the Author

Peter Carey received the Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda, and again for True History of the Kelly Gang. His other honors include the Commonwealth Prize and the Miles Franklin Award. The author of seven previous novels and a collection of stories, he was born in Australia in 1943 and now lives in New York City. 

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (January 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400030889
• ISBN-13: 978-1400030880
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #474,041 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ern Malley Case + Frankenstein + Conrad?, August 20, 2005

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Life as a Fake (Paperback)

I am generally very suspicious of novels whose plotlines revolve around writers and the world of letters, doubly so in this case, as it involves poetry, which I tend to dislike. However... this is Peter Carey at work, and by the end of this book I'm convinced he could rework an appliance manual into a penetrating and thoughtful story. What he's done here is take a real-life Australian literary hoax from the 1940s, fictionalized it, grafted the gothic Frankenstein story to it, and then superimposed a running theme on the construction of identity by the self. It's the kind of fictional razzle-dazzle that might have seemed arch or pretentious or self-congratulatory in the wrong hands, but Carey pulls it off with style.

The story is narrated on its outer layer (there are numerous stories within stories and narrators within these) by Sarah, the editor of a prestigious, if perpetually bankrupt, English poetry magazine. She writes in the early 1980s, some ten years after the main events of the story, which take place in Kuala Lumpur in 1972. She was taken there by a friend of her deceased parents (and, she suspects, her mother's lover), and seeks to use the trip as a way to talk to him about the suicide of her mother when she was a child. However, one day while strolling the streets of KL, she sees a decrepit white man sitting in a hovel of a bike-repair shop reading Rilke. This piques her interest and she is soon drawn into the strange tale of Christopher Chubb, a man who thirty years previously perpetuated a hoax on a modernist literary review.

Chubb found trendy modernist poetry to be vapid stuff and so submitted some nonsense material from a fictitious blue-collar mechanic poet to an editor he used to go to school with. The editor bought it hook, line and sinker, but eventually was prosecuted on obscenity charges. This is based on the "Ern Malley" case, and follows the real-life case in all its bizarre twists and turns. However, as Chubb relates to Sarah, his fictional poet actually showed up and started harassing him. Chubb had created a fake picture of the poet by grafting three photos of different people together, Frankenstein-like, and the embodiment of this picture appears at his house! Eventually "the monster" kidnaps Chubb's adopted daughter Tina (she is the result of a subplot involving a charismatic and sexy artiste in the '50s) and Chubb embarks on a long quest across Indonesia and Malaysia to try and recover the girl. As Chubb relates his story in Malay-peppered Australian English, one gets a strong whiff of Conrad about the whole affair (Heart of Darkness meets Lord Jim).

Sarah is kept enthralled by this tale because Chubb has shown her a page from another "McCorkle" work that she recognizes as genius. Desperate to finally publish something groundbreaking, she sticks around for the whole convoluted story, even though she's not sure whether or not Chubb is lying to her or possibly even mad. Along the way, there are all manner of stories in miniature -- secrets from Sarah's past and present are revealed, we get a part bit on the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, a Sri Lankan master poisoner is introduced, and as a side bonus there is some great descriptive writing about Kuala Lumpur. Sometimes the framework gets a bit complicated and the reader has to work hard to keep track of which layer of narration or time frame one is in. Readers who like clear resolutions are forewarned that Carey isn't interested in that -- the ultimate point of the book is that we all construct our own identities, to the point that sometimes we lose track of who we are.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In pursuit of perfect poetry, February 2, 2008

By 

Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Life as a Fake (Paperback)

For a nation with so many fine writers, Australia has an unusual number of "fakes" of one kind or another. Not many years ago, a young British immigrant woman almost passed herself off as a Ukrainian refugee. A white male writer masqueraded as an Aborigine woman. Literary posturing isn't new nor unique to Australia, but writers there seem to be trying to launch a new genre through it. Peter Carey's book isn't an attempt to become a cornerstone of this potential realm. Through a narrative that binds the reader to every page, he re-constructs a fictional account of one of Australia's better known early attempts at literary chicanery.

In Australia, the "Ern Malley" affair remains notorious - poems supposedly penned by an unknown genius of the 1940s. Carey bases his tale on this scandal, bringing a fresh sense of life and place to his characters. He introduces Sarah Wode-Douglass, London literary magazine editor, and the man she's long considered her family's nemesis, John Slater. Sarah - known to Slater as "Micks" is lured to Kuala Lumpur, leading her to a disheveled old Australian, Christopher Chubb. Chubb has a secret, which he dangles enticingly before the editor. It's a collection of poetry by a Bob McCorkle, who Chubb invented. The invention was to have highlighted the failure of the Australian literary elite to understand real poetry. In doing so, it would provide a comeuppance to Chubb's former classmate and editor of "Personae", David Weiss.

The situation gets out of hand when Weiss issues the work and is charged with "publishing obscenity" by an over-zealous Melbourne policeman. Worse for Chubb, Bob McCorkle emerges as a "real" figure pursuing Chubb and demanding recognition as the "poetic genius" he's been depicted. Chubb both chases and flees McCorkle, ending up in Malaysia on a bizarre quest. Chubb/Carey creates a monster in McCorkle - a massive man with violent tendencies, bent on retrieving a reputation he's never earned. Lacking the violence, Chubb seeks his own recognition through Micks, and this story is dictated to her during her time in "KL". She must endure a world entirely alien to her while negotiating for the manuscript with a man who is forthcoming in one way, but highly elusive in others.

Carey's handling of this tale is masterful. Even had it not been based on true events, his relation of it is flawless. The characters may seem outlandish in many respects, but the author conveys them with precision and finesse. Sarah is obsessed with her lust for the collection - one is almost reminded of the editors of the post-modernist journal "Social Text" blindly gobbling Alan Sokal's wonderful hoax. Post-modernism has launched many bizarre tales. Carey's knowledge of place is equally compelling as he takes us from KL, through Melbourne, Sydney and back to the Malay jungles. There are warlords, asides in time and place - none of which interrupt the narrative, since each provides enhancement - and a bruising finale. This is one of Carey's supreme works, standing with "Illywhacker" and his fabricated history of Ned Kelly's career. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Fake is fake no matter where you find it.", January 11, 2005

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Life as a Fake (Paperback)

Using a real literary fraud from Australia as the basis for his main plot, Carey introduces the reader to Lady Sarah Wode-Douglass, the editor of a small English poetry magazine, always on the verge of financial collapse. Persuaded by John Slater, a poet and friend of her deceased parents, to accompany him from England to Kuala Lumpur in 1972, she is recollecting her encounter there with Christopher Chubb, a refugee from Australia where he had, in the 1940s, perpetrated a major literary hoax, designed to protest the trends in modern poetry. Chubb had written and succeeded in getting published a series of "poems," supposedly by a man named McCorkle.

The fraud, which took place in the 1940s, is told in flashbacks from the 1972 trip, mainly by Lady Sarah and Chubb. Its wry humor and social commentary are fun to read, with Chubb mocking the state of literary awareness in Australia at that time and providing information about the obscenity trial which resulted from his hoax. When Chubb cleverly shows her one page from another work by "McCorkle," Sarah sees it as a masterpiece akin to "The Wasteland," and tries to obtain the whole manuscript, the publication of which would save her magazine. Sarah's life in 1983, and shocking revelations by John Slater about Sarah's parents, their marriage, and her mother's death in the late 1930's widen the focus and time frame. The reader quickly recognizes, as all the characters play their parts and the story develops, that all are guilty of some sort of fakery.

The second half of the book, however, becomes a wild, often wacky adventure story as separate new plots develop, the time frame changes to World War II, and several new characters, unrelated to the main plot, tell their own stories. Sarah and Slater play no real role in the action as Chubb tries to rescue his daughter from a suddenly real, seven-foot-tall McCorkle, who has kidnapped her and run from island to island in Indonesia and Malaysia, where the Japanese have invaded and have begun vividly described atrocities.

Separate, virtually unconnected plots in four time frames--1983, 1939, 1972, and World War II--revealed by four or five different narrators, in settings that include England, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia all contribute to a confusion of focus. The characters, events, and plot line from the beginning of the book have little if any overlap with the characters, events, and plots in the middle. Though the several sections are exciting and imaginative separately, they did not cohere for me, and I found myself thinking of the first half as a stand-alone novella, with the remaining episodes connected to it as a series of memorable, separately developed short stories. (3.5 stars) Mary Whipple