Ensiklopedia Dunia

Technopedia Center

Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science
S1 Informatics S1 Information Systems S1 Information Technology S1 Computer Engineering S1 Electrical Engineering S1 Civil Engineering

faculty of Economics and Business
S1 Management S1 Accountancy

Faculty of Letters and Educational Sciences
S1 English literature S1 English language education S1 Mathematics education S1 Sports Education

My Life as a Fake - Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My Life as a Fake
First edition (Australia)
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."

Themes

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.

Awards and nominations

2004 The Age Book of the Year. Shortlisted
2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book). Shortlisted
2004 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Fiction. Finalist
2004 Miles Franklin Award. Shortlisted
2004 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, Best Fiction Book. Shortlisted
2005 International Dublin Literary Award. Longlisted

References

^ Wyndham, Susan (2004) Book's got the look, The Sydney Morning Herald 15 September 2004
^ ^a ^b ^c Moran, Jennifer (2003) Carey's powerful plea for novel as act of imagination, The Canberra Times, 21 August 2003, p. 3

v t e Works by Peter Carey
Novels	Bliss (1981) Illywhacker (1985) Oscar and Lucinda (1988) The Tax Inspector (1991) The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994) Jack Maggs (1997) True History of the Kelly Gang (2000) My Life as a Fake (2003) Theft: A Love Story (2006) His Illegal Self (2008) Parrot and Olivier in America (2010) The Chemistry of Tears (2012) Amnesia (2014) A Long Way From Home (2017)
Short story collections	The Fat Man in History (1974) War Crimes (1979) The Fat Man in History and Other Stories (1980) Exotic Pleasures (1990) Collected Stories (1994)
Juvenile fiction	The Big Bazoohley (1995)
Non-fiction	A Letter to Our Son (1994) 30 Days in Sydney (2001) Letter from New York (2001) Wrong about Japan (2004)
Screenplays	Bliss (1985) Until the End of the World (1991)

This article about a 2000s novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page.

Categories:

Hidden categories: