Fakes, Frauds and Other Malarkey
301 Amazing Stories and How Not To Be Fooled
Spoofs, bunkum, ballyhoo, and criminal poppycock
Fakes, Frauds, and Other Malarkey was the featured book for the month of August, 2001, on Charles Colson's two websites, Breakpoint and Wilberforce Forum. Here is their review:
"This amusing book contains hundreds of 'rollicking real-life cases of fakery' in the fields of art, literature, science, medicine, exploration, finance, and religion -- ranging from imaginative play to the cruelest scams. All of them are arranged in chapters including 'Doing Battle with Deception' and 'Flummoxed by Flim-Flam Artists.' Discussions on paranoia, discernment, and truth plus a full bibliography make this as helpful as it is interesting."
Martin Gardener quoted from Fakes, Frauds, and Other Malarkey in his recent book Did Adam and Eve have Navels? (Norton, 2000, 333 pp, pb) in the section "Carlos Castenada and New Age Anthropology." Carlos Castenada died in Westwood, California, in 1998. "His only real sorcery", writes Kathryn Lindskoog in her entertaining book FAKES, FRAUDS, AND OTHER MALARKEY (1993), "was turning the University of California into an ass."
I grew up enjoying April Fool's Day. When I was seventeen I discovered that my first college roommate was an extremely clever pathological liar whose cascade of tall tales convinced everyone but me. (She even forged letters from an alleged sweetheart.)
When I was twenty-one I proved that the testimonial letters to an inpiring Orange County speaker had all been forged on the same typewriter -- although they were on different kinds of paper and were postmarked from various states. (She had allegedly been cured of leukemia by a radical new treatment at a Long Beach hospital. But I sent envelopes to the names and addresses on her letters and they all came back marked no such address. There was also no such treatment, but that was all right in her case because she never had leukemia.) From then on, if I came across anything about forgery, I read it.
When I was thirty-nine, I discovered to my dismay that all the dramatic claims of the delightful priest who took over the C. S. Lewis literary estate after his death were a mammoth hoax. The longer I investigated, the more chicanery I uncovered in his accounts.
When I was fifty-one, I discovered to my horror that some of the writing published under C. S. Lewis's name after his death was forged. After two years of investigation and writing, I published The C.S. Lewis Hoax and started rounding up hundreds of other rollicking real-life cases of fakery in the fields of art, literature, science, medicine, exploration, finance, and religion -- ranging from imaginative play to the cruelest scams. Then I packed them into the following eight chapters.
CHILDHOOD'S SURPRISE DELIGHTS
"Illusion is the first of all pleasures." —Voltaire
Childhood is a time of delicious delusion, when the boundaries between appearance, reality, and make-believe aren't always clear. Memory takes a quick romp through the world of peekaboo and pretend, tooth fairies and tall tales. All our roots are there. The fruits that come later, of course, may be either good or evil.
SPUNKY SPOOFS AND PRECOCIOUS PRANKSTERS
"Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not."—E. R. Beadle
Playful deception spans childhood and the adult world as practical jokes, magic tricks, and other harmless spoofery. Vast quantities of human energy are invested in this happy flumadiddle. But sometimes the play turns painful.
ACCEPTABLE RATES OF INFLATION
"A pinch of probably is worth a pound of perhaps." — James Thurber
Many hoaxes are designed to deflate pomposity, to expose gullibility, and to prove the carelessness of experts. In contrast, journalists have often indulged in buncum and ballyhoo for the sheer fun of it. For these and several other reasons, including pride, hoaxes have become part of our official history.
WOWING AN AUDIENCE
"Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use." — Mark Twain
Truth is stranger than fiction in the world's chronicle of canny confabulators, imposing imposters and famous forgers. Intrepid inventors and beguiling borrowers never let truth get in the way of a good story.
FLUMMOXED BY FLIM-FLAM ARTISTS
"There's one way to find out if a man is honest — ask him. If he says yes, he's a crook." — Groucho Marx
There are fortunes to be made in art fakes, and profit in scientific poppycock. When the corridors of culture contain more spuriosity than curiosity, someone has to pay for the drives, dreams, and delusions of scholarship's artful deceivers.
SWINDLERS, HOAXERS, SHAMS AND SCAMS
"Those who know Louisiana towns say it's just a short drive between Plain Dealing and Swindleville." —L.M. Boyd
The kingdom of criminal deception includes realms of roguery that look like panoramas of paradise. Its lords and ladies rule by betrayal, although they sometimes wear the faces of angels. In this moral no-man's-land, religion is just another lie.
DOING BATTLE WITH DECEPTION
"For a lie always harms another; if not some other particular man, still it harms mankind generally." —Immanuel Kant
Look out, hoaxers; here come the consumer advocates and general fake-finders. Look out, innocent bystanders; some vigilantes for virtue are peddling paranoia. Meanwhile, most brave whistle-blowers don't get medals; they get dishonorable discharges instead.
DAMNED, DUPED, OR DELIVERED?
"God regards pure hands, not full." — Latin Proverb
Are we willing to sell our souls for the pleasure and power that lies can bring? Have we become unwitting pawns and puppets of deceivers? How to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and how to end the ultimate deception.
These eight chapters are followed by a humorous "Hoaxer's Epilogue," over 200 Bible passages about deception (from Genesis to Revelation), and an annotated list of 64 books for further reading.
REVIEW
"On reading through this litany of lying, it is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Perhaps we should laugh first. The stories that Lindskoog collects and organizes are often great fun — since we are not direct victims — and, after family reading, the book can be profitably left on the bedside table of the guest room, with sure knowledge that it can be dipped into and enjoyed.... The immediate apparent merit of this book is the great collection of examples, but Lindskoog does much more by drawing to our attention, at a time when rhetoric is seemingly the highest art, the danger and decadence of so much malarkey."