Bunk: Book Review

 

Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

Kevin young, Greywolf Press 2017

I was really excited about getting my hands on this book. I’ve mostly known Kevin Young for his poetry. His publishing creds are impeccable, and the above title was longlisted for the National Book Award in non-fiction.

It was a busy holiday spent hanging out and when not hanging then reading. I finished a couple heavy-hitter books. With more holds piling up on the shelves at the library. So with Bunk I started with the back and read around, eventually starting at the beginning. Maybe because of this “pecking” it felt like a couple different books to me.

Part Six: Unoriginal Sin was about appropriating and misappropriating material and culture not part of one’s milieu. What I appreciated most was Young’s narrative voice. Have you ever wished while reading non-fiction for the author to interject—yo! Now it gets serious, or any number of observations. Sure it deviates from the objective, from the analytical, but I found the voice extremely engaging. And, it tuned me in. Young did have a bias or a bone to pick. It was a side to history and the theme that didn’t feel overworked. It was fresh, brain tipping, causing me to slide into a whole new perspective.

Clearly Kevin was exploring themes and instances of hoaxery that have intrigued myself. For example: Rachel Dolezal, the white lady pretending to be Black that ended up heading up a local NAACP chapter. Some stuff is so weird it sounds made up, and some of it is made up. That’s the point, he points out. You’re stealing our story.

He also delved into the convoluted world of plagiarists and those who tell false stories. At my blog I’ve covered some of these people. It is like a hall of mirrors, who is taking from whom. What might first appear benign is later proved to be fatal. You’re stealing someone’s story.

And by stealing you are diminishing. Sort of like how I feel when politicians re-arrange words to make some new soul-killing policy sound super great. Like in my neighborhood how the local alderman drones on about “housing first” for the homeless all the while using Nazi tactics to terrorize them and eventually uproot them and ship them to Elgin. “Not in my backyard.” What developers do when they pay into a low income housing pot instead of offering low-income housing, making them seem altruistic but in the end disenfranchising.

Like a day in Trump tweet world. Everything is upended.

Eng and Chang

The first half of the book discusses P.T. Barnum and the whole idea of othering: Freak Shows. The phenomena of putting something over, pulling the wool over our eyes. It’s here where I had mixed feelings. There’s a big difference between exhibiting a headless chicken that’s managed to live than say Lance Armstrong doping for decades and claiming Tour de France jerseys and prize money. One has to do with base curiosity and the other with an intentional fraud.

Then I went to the movies.