My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
From the two-time winner of the New Zealand Booker Prize (Oscar and Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang) comes an enthralling tale based on a nearly unknown incident in Australia's past that uses gothic trappings to highlight the battle between artistic passion and personal integrity.

When London poetry editor Sarah Wode-Douglass accompanies a rebel writer to Malaysia, she meets the notorious Christopher Chubb, a now-homeless bicycle repairman who concocted a literary hoax in the 1940s that destroyed several lives. Using the pseudonym of "Bob McCorkle," Chubb forced a young female editor to face an obscenity trial that eventually got out of hand and led to her suicide. As if this were not enough, a seven-foot giant claiming to be the real Bob McCorkle appeared out of nowhere and, acting out of revenge against his "creator," kidnapped Chubb's daughter.

Carey weaves a complex, imaginative plot that uses clashing narratives to build conflict and suspense,as mysterious characters confront each other and revelations are disclosed in rapid-fire succession. You'll find yourself waiting impatiently for the eventual throwdown between Chubb and his creation McCorkle, a face-off that will draw all the novel's threads together in a wondrous and thrilling finale. A mesmerizing, innovative work of fiction, My Life as a Fake is as much a thoughtful exploration of conscience as it is a lyrical mystery concerning the creative soul. Tom Piccirilli

From the Publisher

Fiendishly devious and addictively readable, Peter Carey’s My Life as a Fake is a moral labyrinth constructed around the uneasy relationship between literature and lying. In steamy, fetid Kuala Lumpur in 1972, Sarah Wode-Douglass, the editor of a London poetry journal, meets a mysterious Australian named Christopher Chubb. Chubb is a despised literary hoaxer, carting around a manuscript likely filled with deceit. But in this dubious manuscript Sarah recognizes a work of real genius. But whose genius? As Sarah tries to secure the manuscript, Chubb draws her into a fantastic story of imposture, murder, kidnapping, and exile–a story that couldn’t be true unless its teller were mad. My Life as a Fake is Carey at his most audacious and entertaining.

The New York Times

Given the amply demonstrated brilliance of its author, My Life as a Fake is also replete with its own poetic echoes and allusions. They work best when the narrative still appears firmly grounded in reality, and when the obtuseness of the poetry-averse can become one of the book's sly delights … My Life as a Fake is serious about art, but Mr. Carey's down-to-earth Australian wryness is also much in evidence. —Janet Maslin

Publishers Weekly

Carey, who won the Man Booker Prize for his True History of the Kelly Gang, takes another strange but much less well-known episode in Australian history as the basis for this hypnotic novel of personal and artistic obsession. He tells it through the eyes of Lady Sarah Wode-Douglass, editor of a struggling but prestigious London poetry journal, who one day in the early 1970s finds herself accompanying an old family friend, poet and novelist John Slater, out to Malaysia. There they encounter an eccentric Australian expatriate, Christopher Chubb, who concocted, Slater says, a huge literary hoax in Australia just after the war, creating an imaginary genius poet, Bob McCorkle, whose publication by a little magazine led to the suicide of the magazine's editor. Now Chubb offers Lady Sarah a page of poetry that shows undoubted genius and claims it is from a book in his possession. Lady Sarah's every acquisitive instinct is inflamed, but to get her hands on the book she has to listen, as Chubb inflicts on her, Ancient Mariner-like, the amazing story of his own epic struggle with McCorkle. In the end, the vaunted manuscript is revealed to be in the care of Chubb's fierce daughter (long ago kidnapped and raised by McCorkle) and a deranged Chinese woman. To what lengths will Lady Sarah go to get it, and how will the women keep it from her? The tale is a tour de force, with a positively Graham Greene-ish relish in the seamy side of the tropics, a mix of literary detective story and murderous nightmare that is piquantly hair-raising. And just when it seems that Carey's story is his greatest fantastic creation to date, he lets on that the hoax at the heart of it actually took place in Melbourne in 1946. As so often before, this extravagantly gifted writer has created something bewilderingly original and powerful. (Nov. 30) Forecast: There is no denying the fascination of Carey's tale, but his devoted readers may find it more difficult to succumb to the allure of a neglected poet than to the more obvious thrills of an outlaw life. 75,000 first printing. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Hoping to gain some insight into her parents' troubled marriage, London poetry editor Sarah Wode-Douglass accepts an invitation from novelist and family friend John Slater to accompany him to his Malaysian retreat. Her focus, however, quickly turns to another Malay resident, the enigmatic Christopher Chubb, who in the 1940s devised a literary hoax to embarrass a young poetry editor at a fashionable magazine. Using the pseudonym Bob McCorkle, Chubb submitted poems that were admittedly imitative and, for the era, racy; their subsequent publication led to an obscenity trial for the editor, who came to a bad end. Strangely, no one seemed interested in Chubb's confession, and things became more complicated when a seven-foot giant claiming to be Bob McCorkle appeared in the flesh. This strange golem cursed Chubb's life; born at 24 and determined to possess a childhood he never had, he absconded with Chubb's young daughter. When Sarah learns this story, she becomes obsessed with what McCorkle means to Chubb and Chubb's efforts to reclaim his daughter. Carey's fans won't find this novel as rich in background and characterization as earlier works like Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang; the narrative is pared down, and there's a definite emphasis on action in the closing pages. But this is no flaw-the book reads like a shot, and as before, the author peoples his tales with charming and intelligent rogues, albeit 20th-century ones this time around. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/03.]-Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The two-time New Zealand Booker winner (The True History of the Kelly Gang, 2000, etc.) traces the honeycombed ramifications of a brazen literary hoax (based on a real incident that occurred in 1943 in Australia). Carey’s initial narrator is Englishwoman Sarah Wode-Douglass, who edits a struggling magazine, and, more or less impulsively, accompanies renegade writer John Slater on a trip to Kuala Lumpur—despite "hating him all my life"—for what she believes was Slater’s adulterous responsibility for her mother’s suicide. That’s one complication. Then, in Malaysia, Sarah encounters poet maudit Christopher Chubb, now a homeless indigent subsisting as a bicycle repairman, who claims a history with Slater that the latter hastily disavows. Chubb makes an extravagant claim: that he had perpetrated a hoax by circulating his own poems as the works of nonexistent genius "Bob McCorkle" (the fallout from this deception caused the death of a young editor, and destroyed Chubb’s career); and that "McCorkle" came to life, swore vengeance on his "creator," and went on to ruin several other lives. Chubb’s and Slater’s conflicting stories are juxtaposed with Sarah’s editorial quandary (should she scoop the literary world by publishing faked "masterpieces"?) and increasingly dangerous investigations. Carey’s corker of a plot (with echoes of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Roman Polanski’s film Chinatown, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) delivers surprise after surprise and peaks with a masterly extended set-piece that pits Chubb vs. "McCorkle" in the steaming hotbed of (then) Malaya under Japanese occupation. Issues of artistic inspiration, integrity, and authenticity are thus brilliantly allegorizedin a wonderland of a yarn, of which (the not entirely veracious) Slater declares "He [i.e., Chubb] will drag you into his delusional world, have you believing the most preposterous things." So will Peter Carey, God bless him. A Nabokovian masterpiece. First printing of 75,000

Product Details

• ISBN: 0641790864
  
• ISBN-13: 9780641790867
• Format: Hardcover, 288pp
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Pub. Date: October 2003
• Edition Description: Bargain
• Sales Rank: 23,687

• Reading Group Guide
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Reading Group Guide

1. My Life as a Fake opens with a satirical description of London's literary elite, placing the fictional John Slater within the company of such real-life figures as Robert Lowell, Dylan Thomas, and the "Faber crowd," and establishing Sarah's literary credentials as the editor of The Modern Review. How does this portrait set the framework and tone for the rest of the novel?

2. Is Sarah's fascination with John Slater based solely on her suspicions about the role he played in her parents' lives? Why, despite her antipathy to travel, does she agree to accompany him to Malaysia? What are his motivations for asking her?

3. Is Slater's account of the McCorkle hoax (pp. 19–21) designed to pique or discourage Sarah's interest in the scandal? What particular details support your answer?

4. At the end of her first meeting with Chubb, Sarah says, "Chubb appeared monstrous—malicious, anti-Semitic, so grotesque and self-deceiving in his love of 'truth and beauty'" (p. 33). What insights does this harsh evaluation offer into Sarah's decision to pursue the poet and the manuscript he briefly shares with her?

5. In describing the Australian characterand culture, Slater says, "Remember, this is the country of the duck-billed platypus. When you are cut off from the rest of the world, things are bound to develop in interesting ways." (pp. 19–20), while Chubb chooses to see his homeland as a victim of the "Tyranny of Distance" (p. 29). What do these views reveal about differences between an outside observer (Slater) and a native? Is Chubb's viewpoint shaped by his own lack of recognition as a man of learning and intelligence? In what ways does it color his description of David Weiss (pp. 30–31), a Jew whose privileged childhood and early success Chubb openly resents? What impact does it have on his account of the obscenity trial (p.56)?

6. McCorkle's rant against the prosecution of Weiss and his vow to exact justice "not just for the sake of David Weiss but of art itself, and for a country where we seldom understand that we must be prepared to fight for issues bigger than an umpire's decision at the Melbourne Cricket Ground" (pp. 77–78) is an escalation of Chubb's criticisms of Australian society. Why has Carey put these words into the mouth of the "phantom poet"?

7. When McCorkle recites one of Chubb's contrived parodies, Carey writes, ". . . this lunatic had somehow recast it without altering a word. What had been clever had now become true, the song of the autodidact, the colonial, the damaged beast of the antipodes" (p. 82). What does this imply about the nature of literature? About the relationship between writer and audience?

8. How does Carey use minor characters—from David Weiss, the rival Chubb hopes to expose, to Noussette (who, Chubb declares, would "try anything. . . . could be who she wished" (p. 93) to Mulaha, the master of poisons Chubb encounters in the jungle (pp. 196–197)—to explore the role of deception in human lives? In what ways do these incidental figures help define the moral universe of the novel?

9. "I went to bed with the disconcerting knowledge that almost everything I had assumed about my life was incorrect, that I had been baptized in blood and raised on secrets and misconstructions which had, obviously, made me who I was" ( p. 133), Sarah writes after learning the truth about her mother's death and her father's dual life. Why do Slater's revelations free her to divulge the story of her own long-term love affair? Does the relationship reveal something about her character that was previously hidden? Does it make her more or less appealing?

10. McCorkle quotes Milton's Paradise Lost when he demands that Chubb give him a birth certificate (p. 95). What other quotations or literary references extend the scope and resonance of the story? What purpose do they serve in the overall scheme of the novel? For example, what do they suggest about Carey's feelings about "serious" literature and its acolytes?

11. The creature's hold over Chubb reaches a climax when he kidnaps Nousette's baby and raises her as his own. How does Chubb's unrelenting pursuit of the pair—as well as the creature's ability to convince the little girl that Chubb is an evil spirit (p. 208)—mirror the creative process and the fears, hopes, and ambitions that drive an artist?

12. My Life as a Fake is narrated by Sarah, but the voices of Slater, Chubb, and McCorkle take over at various crucial points. What effect does this have on your reactions to the events? Whose point of view seems the most reliable and why?

13. On his death bed, McCorkle gives Chubb a manuscript with the "fierce sarcastic title, My Life as a Fake." (p. 256). In what ways does the title sum up not only McCorkle's life, but also the life stories of each of the other three major characters?

14. While the Ern Malley scandal is familiar to Australian readers and students of literary hoaxes, it is probably unknown to most American readers. In what ways might this affect the reader's response to the novel? Does it stand entirely on its own or would knowledge of the actual events enhance the reading experience? Why do you think Carey chose to explain the sources of the novel in an afterword rather than in an introduction or prologue?

15. In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the monster destroys Victor Frankenstein, the brilliant scientist who created him. One of the major themes of that novel is the danger of unfettered scientific inquiry and experimentation. Are there similarities between Chubb's motivations and those of Dr. Frankenstein? In drawing on the theme and structure of Frankenstein for My Life as a Fake, what is Carey saying about the nature of genius? Are superior minds and talents exempt from the ethical guidelines of ordinary society?

16. Carey appropriated and reanimated the plot of Dickens's Great Expectations in a previous novel, Jack Maggs, and his Booker Prize–winning True History of the Kelly Gang retells the story of one of Australia's most famous real-life legends. In My Life as a Fake, Carey exploits both literary devices, imposing the framework of a classic work of fiction on an historical event. How does the juxtaposition illuminate Carey's definition of "creativity" and the role of the fiction writer? To what extent does the history of literature represent an ongoing endeavor to conflate reality and make-believe, and give the world an utterly original creation?

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