Author | Peter Carey |
---|---|
Cover artist | Jenny Griggs [1] |
Language | English |
Publisher | Knopf (Australia & US) Faber & Faber (UK) |
Publication date | 2003 |
Publication place | Australia |
Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) |
Pages | 269 |
ISBN | 9781740512565 |
OCLC | 224742366 |
Preceded by | True History of the Kelly Gang |
Followed by | Theft: A Love Story |
My Life as a Fake is a 2003 novel by Australian writer Peter Carey based on the Ern Malley hoax of 1943, in which two poets created a fictitious poet, Ern Malley, and submitted poems in his name to the literary magazine Angry Penguins .
The novel was inspired by the idea of "a 24-year-old hoax brought to life – original, angry, multilingual, learned. He was interested in what the being would know instinctively and what he would be ignorant of. How would the creator deal with his creation, and the creation with his creator?" [2] He realised as he was writing the book that he was not interested in James McAuley and Harold Stewart who perpetrated the hoax but in "magical thinking". [2]
It is told as a first-person narrative from the point of view of a young woman editing a literary magazine, and is presented as her account of her encounter with the perpetrator of the hoax after many years. However, it was originally written in the voice of "the created being". [2] Carey takes a number of significant liberties in his novelization, not the least of which is his decision to make the Ern Malley counterpart (called Bob McCorkle in the story) an actual person who ends up haunting his "creator."
A major theme of the novel is the ambiguity of reality, as the reader must wrestle with the question of whether the man claiming to be Bob McCorkle is a maniac with an identity delusion, a hoaxer's hoaxer, a coincidence, or a phantasm called into being by his creator. As a discussion of and commentary on modern poetry, particularly Australian poetry, the novel makes many references to Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Walt Whitman, who can be seen to have had an influence on Carey.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1945.
The Ern Malley hoax, also called the Ern Malley affair, is Australia's most famous literary hoax. Its name derives from Ernest Lalor "Ern" Malley, a fictitious poet whose biography and body of work were created in one day in 1943 by conservative writers James McAuley and Harold Stewart in order to hoax the Angry Penguins, a modernist art and literary movement centred around a journal of the same name, co-edited by poet Max Harris and art patron John Reed, of Heide, Melbourne.
Dorothy Auchterlonie was an English-born Australian academic, literary critic and poet.
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early Western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition of English literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes as Aboriginality, mateship, egalitarianism, democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in the Australian bush.
Brian Albert Castro is an Australian novelist and essayist.
Peter David Goldsworthy is an Australian writer and medical practitioner. He has won major awards for his short stories, poetry, novels, and opera libretti. He is known for his novels Honk If You Are Jesus, and Three Dog Night. His 1989 novel Maestro is being made into an upcoming film.
Angry Penguins was an art and literary journal founded in 1940 by surrealist poet Max Harris. Originally based in Adelaide, the journal moved to Melbourne in 1942 once Harris joined the Heide Circle, a group of modernist painters and writers who stayed at Heide, a property owned by art patrons John and Sunday Reed. Angry Penguins subsequently became associated with, and stimulated, an art movement now known by the same name. The Angry Penguins sought to introduce avant-garde ideas into Australian art and literature, and position Australia within a broader international modernism. Key figures of the movement include Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester and Albert Tucker.
Maxwell Henley Harris AO, generally known as Max Harris, was an Australian poet, critic, columnist, commentator, publisher, and bookseller.
James Phillip McAuley was an Australian academic, poet, journalist, literary critic and a prominent convert to Roman Catholicism. He was involved in the Ern Malley poetry hoax.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Harold Frederick Stewart was an Australian poet and oriental scholar. He is chiefly remembered alongside fellow poet James McAuley as a co-creator of the Ern Malley literary hoax.
David Musgrave is an Australian poet, novelist, publisher and critic. He is the founder of and publisher at Puncher & Wattmann, an independent press which publishes Australian poetry and literary fiction. He is also Deputy Chair of Australian Poetry Limited.
Ibrahim Nasrallah, the winner of the Arabic Booker Prize (2018), was born in 1954 to Palestinian parents who were evicted from their land in Al-Burayj, Palestine in 1948. He spent his childhood and youth in a refugee camp in Jordan, and began his career as a teacher in Saudi Arabia. After returning to Amman, he worked in the media and cultural sectors till 2006 when he dedicated his life to writing. To date, he has published 15 poetry collections, 22 novels, and several other books. In 1985, he started writing the Palestinian Comedy covering 250 years of modern Palestinian history in a series of novels in which each novel is an independent one; to date 13 novels have been published in the framework of this project. Five of his novels and a volume of poetry have been published in English, nine in Persian, four works in Italian, two in Spanish, and one novel in Danish and Turkish.
Alan Gould is a contemporary Australian novelist, essayist and poet.
David Gordon Brooks is an Australian poet, novelist, short-fiction writer and essayist. He is the author of four published novels, four collections of short stories and five collections of poetry, and his work has won or been shortlisted for major prizes. Brooks is a highly intellectual writer, and his fiction has drawn frequent comparison with the writers Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges.
Gregory Day is an Australian novelist, poet, and musician.
Patrick McGuinness FRSL FLSW is a British academic, critic, novelist, and poet. He is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford, where he is Fellow and Tutor at St Anne's College.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1944.
This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1945.
Stephen Orr is an Australian writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. His works are set in uniquely Australian settings, including coastal towns, outback regions and the Australian suburbs. His fiction explores the dynamics of Australian families and communities.