Faking It: Literature in the Age of the Hoax

How is society simultaneously constructed and undermined by the persistence of fakes? With its cousins the hoax and the forgery, the fake plays the straw man in much of political, religious, and philosophical discourse, but the fake’s insistence on re-conceiving notions of originality and purity is more substantial. Pursuing a definition of the fake, we will consider its many forms in contemporary society alongside novels that parody and complicate the history of these particular deceptions. Authors include: Borges, Bolano, Ishiguro, Byatt, and McCarthy. Enrollment limited to 17.