美国国家公共电台 NPR A Book On 'Bunk' For Our Post-Truth Times

 

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

It's no secret that America is going through a post-truth or fake news moment. There are people in this country who continue to believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job. Fake news went so far as to convince a North Carolina man to storm a D.C. pizza parlor¹ with a high-powered weapon after he started following an elaborate online hoax² linking Hillary Clinton to a nonexistent child sex trafficking ring.

So if you are wondering why America seems so obsessed³ with falsehoods and when this obsession⁴ began, well, essayist and poet Kevin Young tries to answer that in his latest book. It's called "Bunk⁵: The Rise Of Hoaxes⁶, Humbug⁷, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts And Fake News." And Kevin Young is with us now from our studios in New York. Kevin Young, thank you so much for being with us.

KEVIN YOUNG: Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: And your work titles are about as long as the title of this book. I may add that you've been named poetry editor at The New Yorker. You are the director of a major research library in New York. But let's start with the book. You actually started this book years ago. How did you get interested in the subject?

YOUNG: Well, I actually had the misfortune, fortune - I don't know which it is - to work with a hoaxer⁸ or someone who turned out to be a hoaxer later. At the time, it seemed just like he was one of us. And we worked as editors together on a travel guide. And he came in one day and announced he had cancer, which was terrible, of course. And then later in the light of all his sort of later hoaxing⁹, which involved, you know, pretending to give money to a university who threw a party for him, and then not giving any money. It seems clear that that was fake, too - that his cancer never existed, and he had shaved his head.

MARTIN: Oh, my goodness.

YOUNG: Yeah, I mean, it was pretty wild to put - realize later. But I think, quite specifically, I became really interested about six years ago. And thinking about why now do there seem to be more hoaxes? And are they, in fact, worse? And I came to quickly see that, yes, that was true. And once I finished the book, it seemed only more true.

MARTIN: You know, the book suggests that originally the idea of the hoax began sort of innocently. There was even a sense of, like, fun and showmanship to it. But then you say that by the time we get to the mid-20th century, the hoax becomes more nefarious¹⁰. Why is that?

YOUNG: Well, I think the 19th century hoaxes are trying to sort of establish America's history, you know. It's trying to think about how we as a new nation can have this august past. And often, that's what the hoaxes involved. So P.T. Barnum - the famous showman's first big hoax was of Joice Heth, a black woman he exhibited who he said was George Washington's first nurse maid, and that she would have been then 161 years old, which was part of what he said. He said she's 161. Come see for yourself.

And there was a lot of stuff in the press about, was she even physically¹¹ real? Was she, you know, an automaton¹²? Was she made of rubber? What was she? So there was this kind of mix of feelings, I think, that viewers had. One was this connection to George Washington, say. But also, there was this desire to become expert in something. They could decide for themselves.

And now, I think we're really in a really different era, where people have, in our very, very current moment, sort of decided¹³ there are no more experts. You know, being a scientist or a doctor - something that Barnum would make up - some, you know, a doctor who had examined her and proclaimed her real. Now, we don't even believe that about things that are real. And so it's a very strange moment.

MARTIN: One of the interesting aspects of the book is the way you connect race to the history of hoaxes - whether it's - you know, it's P.T. Barnum's exhibit of a woman he claimed was the former slave of George Washington. You just told us about that. Or the human zoos that put caricatures of Native Americans and Africans on display. And you connect that, you know, to, say, Rachel Dolezal who was somebody that a lot of people may remember that name as a woman who, for some reason, decided that she was black and passed herself off as African-American. Could you talk a little bit about the relationship between hoaxes and race?

YOUNG: Yeah, I think it's not an accident. And I came to believe this - that the term hoax and our modern idea of race developed around the same time in the middle of the 18th century. And those two concepts kind of grow up together, and the hoax quite often, from Barnam times onward¹⁴, makes use of race - whether it's someone pretending to be Native American of which there are just millions. A hoax - it starts to feel like to, you know, someone like you said, like Rachel Dolezal, who isn't just passing as black. She's darkening her skin, changing her hair and adapting a certain kind of stance and becoming, in her case, the head of the NAACP somewhere.

And I started to think about, well, is there something American about all of this? And certainly, there is, in our culture, this notion of, you know, you can become anything. You can change. And I think that gets intertwined with the hoax, but not as much as race, which, you know, in the hoaxes that make use of it very much are about things not changing and about sort of assigning to other people some exotic belief or some exotic stance or, often, some inferiority.

MARTIN: I understand that this is a work of description. It is a work that's deeply researched. But is that enough? I mean, if this crisis of fakeness and fakery and truthiness is as profound as your book suggests that it is, doesn't that mean that, you know, all of us have some responsibility? And what is it? What's yours?

YOUNG: Well, that's a great question. I mean, I think our responsibility is to think critically and to listen to each other and to talk, I think, you know, about some of these issues and not just let them be exploited by someone who wants to pretend to care about them but really is plagiarizing¹⁵ someone else's pain, say. We might have to ask more of our systems - whether that's of our journalists who I think are working overtime¹⁶ and are catching¹⁷ a lot of these falsehoods but also of our government, but also, as you point out, ourselves.

I think that I try really hard to think about how we deceive ourselves and how we let ourselves be deceived. And race is one big component¹⁸ in that. And how can we get past that is something the book asks, but also I think, in asking, starts to solve.

MARTIN: That's Kevin Young. His latest book is "Bunk: The Rise Of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts And Fake News." He was kind enough to join us from our bureau in New York. Kevin Young, thank you so much for speaking with us. I hope we'll talk again.

YOUNG: Me too.

MARTIN: And it'll be the truth.

YOUNG: (Laughter) Nothing but.

1 parlor   

n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅

参考例句：

• She was lying on a small settee in the parlor.她躺在客厅的一张小长椅上。
• Is there a pizza parlor in the neighborhood?附近有没有比萨店？

2 hoax   

v.欺骗，哄骗，愚弄；n.愚弄人，恶作剧

参考例句：

• They were the victims of a cruel hoax.他们是一个残忍恶作剧的受害者。
• They hoax him out of his money.他们骗去他的钱。

3 obsessed   

adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的

参考例句：

• He's obsessed by computers. 他迷上了电脑。
• The fear of death obsessed him throughout his old life. 他晚年一直受着死亡恐惧的困扰。

4 obsession   

n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感)

参考例句：

• I was suffering from obsession that my career would be ended.那时的我陷入了我的事业有可能就此终止的困扰当中。
• She would try to forget her obsession with Christopher.她会努力忘记对克里斯托弗的迷恋。

5 bunk   

n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话

参考例句：

• He left his bunk and went up on deck again.他离开自己的铺位再次走到甲板上。
• Most economists think his theories are sheer bunk.大多数经济学家认为他的理论纯属胡说。

6 hoaxes   

n.恶作剧，戏弄( hoax的名词复数 )v.开玩笑骗某人，戏弄某人( hoax的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The disc jockey, a young separatist named Pierre Brassard, has made his name with such hoaxes. 这位名叫彼埃尔 - 布拉萨尔的音乐节目主持人，是一名年轻的分离主义者，以制造这类骗局闻名。 来自百科语句
• This chain-letter hoaxes, has mutated over the years. 这一骗局多年来在互联网上不断发展和变异。 来自互联网

7 humbug   

n.花招，谎话，欺骗

参考例句：

• I know my words can seem to him nothing but utter humbug.我知道，我说的话在他看来不过是彻头彻尾的慌言。
• All their fine words are nothing but humbug.他们的一切花言巧语都是骗人的。

8 hoaxer   

n.欺诈者，戏弄者

参考例句：

• The hoaxer had sent the police on a wild-goose chase. 那个捣蛋的人让警方白白搜索了一番。 来自互联网
• The local newspapers dressed up the candidate as a hoaxer. 当地报纸把这个候选人描述成一个骗子。 来自互联网

9 hoaxing   

v.开玩笑骗某人，戏弄某人( hoax的现在分词 )

参考例句：

10 nefarious   

adj.恶毒的，极坏的

参考例句：

• My father believes you all have a nefarious purpose here.我父亲认为你们都有邪恶的目的。
• He was universally feared because of his many nefarious deeds.因为他干了许多罪恶的勾当，所以人人都惧怕他。

11 physically   

adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律

参考例句：

• He was out of sorts physically,as well as disordered mentally.他浑身不舒服，心绪也很乱。
• Every time I think about it I feel physically sick.一想起那件事我就感到极恶心。

12 automaton   

n.自动机器，机器人

参考例句：

• This is a fully functional automaton.这是一个有全自动功能的机器人。
• I get sick of being thought of as a political automaton.我讨厌被看作政治机器。

13 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

14 onward   

adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先

参考例句：

• The Yellow River surges onward like ten thousand horses galloping.黄河以万马奔腾之势滚滚向前。
• He followed in the steps of forerunners and marched onward.他跟随着先辈的足迹前进。

15 plagiarizing   

v.剽窃，抄袭( plagiarize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He was accused of plagiarizing his colleague's results. 他被指控剽窃同事的成果。
• Moderates are plagiarizing his ideas in hopes of wooing voters. 温和派为讨好选民在盗用他的观点。 来自辞典例句

16 overtime   

adj.超时的，加班的；adv.加班地

参考例句：

• They are working overtime to finish the work.为了完成任务他们正在加班加点地工作。
• He was paid for the overtime he worked.他领到了加班费。

17 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

18 component   

n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的

参考例句：

• Each component is carefully checked before assembly.每个零件在装配前都经过仔细检查。
• Blade and handle are the component parts of a knife.刀身和刀柄是一把刀的组成部分。