Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff

by Lydia Pyne

Overview

Is the distinction between “real” and “fake” as clear-cut as we think?

Does an authentic Andy Warhol painting need to be painted by Andy Warhol? Should we be outraged that some of those famous scenes in Blue Planet were filmed in a lab? Who are the scientists putting ever-more improbable flavors in our Jelly Belly beans? Welcome to the world of “genuine fakes”—the curious objects that fall in between things that are real and things that are not. Unsurprisingly, the world is full of genuine fakes that defy simple categorization. Whether or not we think that those things are authentic is a matter of perspective.

In Genuine Fakes, historian Lydia Pyne explores how the authenticity of eight genuine fakes depends on their unique combinations of history, science and culture. The stories of art forgeries, fake fossils, nature documentaries, synthetic flavors, museum exhibits, Maya codices and Paleolithic replicas shows that genuine fakes are complicated and change over time. Drawing from historical archives, interviews, museum exhibits, science fiction as well as her own research, Pyne brings each genuine fake to life through unexpected and often outrageous stories.

Can people move past assuming that a diamond grown in a lab is a fake? What happens when a forged painting or manuscript becomes more valuable than its original? Genuine Fakes will make readers think about all the unreal things that they encounter in their daily lives and why they invoke the reactions—surprise, wonder, understanding or annoyance—that they do.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472961822
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	10/29/2019
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,211,971
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Lydia Pyne is a writer and historian, interested in the history of science and material culture. She has degrees in history and anthropology and a PhD in history and philosophy of science from Arizona State University, and is currently a visiting researcher at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her field and archival work has ranged from South Africa, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and Iran to the American Southwest.

Lydia's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, History Today, Time, The Scientist, Lady Science and Electric Literature as well as The Public Domain Review, and her previous book was Seven Skeletons, the story of human origins.

Editorial Reviews

07/01/2019

Historian Pyne (Seven Skeletons) offers a thoughtful examination of what it is to be fake, using case studies ranging from instances of outright deception to clearly labeled recreations, with plenty of gray area in between. In the process, she raises a host of provocative questions, not least of which is this: can a replica be good or authentic, or can it even “stand in for the genuine thing?” For example, Pyne notes that many modern artificial food flavors are chemically and structurally identical to their natural equivalents. Elsewhere, she demonstrates the utility of fakes by pointing to the painstaking recreation of France’s Chauvet Cave, in which Paleolithic paintings were found, in order to preserve the actual site as it was. Pyne doesn’t neglect instances of outright deception, such as by prolific 18th-century Shakespearean forger William Henry Ireland, who made his fake documents, letters, and plays more convincing by spelling Shakespeare’s name inconsistently, just as the Bard did himself. Thanks to this and plenty of other odd and intriguing facts—such as that synthetic banana flavoring was codified in the late 19th century and thus mimics a now-extinct variety of the fruit—Pyne’s well-written survey illuminates the ramifications of various types of fakery, even while showing how murky the concept of what is fake can get. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2019-08-18
An intriguing exploration of "frauds, forgeries, and fakes."

Because of recent "worries about ‘fake news' and ‘alternative facts,' the question of authenticity has taken on particular urgency," writes historian Pyne (Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils, 2016, etc.). She offers examples "where a ‘real' object ends and where a ‘fake' (or less than real) object begins," drawing from a variety of disciplines including art, literature, mineralogy, natural history, archaeology, and wildlife documentaries. In the late 19th century, the "Spanish Forger" plied his—or her; the forger's identity was never known—trade in the art world, becoming "one of the most skillful, and successful, and prolific forgers of all time." Many museums had his Renaissance replicas—some 350 of them—until the ruse was uncovered years later. In the late 18th century, William Henry Ireland began forging all things Shakespeare—autographs, wills, even whole plays—using period ink and paper. The collectable fakes eventually became "more genuine for having been fake in the first place." In the chapter titled "The Truth About the Lying Stones," Pyne recounts how an expert was duped by three young men's forged fossils. The scholar went to court in 1726 in hopes of "saving his honour." Man's creation of diamonds began in the late 18th century and reached its zenith in the 1950s when De Beers began making and selling synthetic diamonds. In the mid-20th century, companies actively created new, fake flavors as they drove "consumers' expectations about what food ought to taste like." Pyne ponders the "delicate tango of blending art and artifice into the world of storytelling in wildlife films." Particularly fascinating is France's costly replica of the famous Palaeolithic Chauvet Cave; the real one is closed to the public. Pyne also scrutinizes blue whale skeletons, a Mayan Codex, and artist Bansky's paleo-inspired artifact, with "fake provenance and falsified index number," surreptitiously installed in the British Museum, which went undiscovered for days.

Genuine history smartly explored.

Kirkus Reviews

Lively, thought-provoking, and consistently surprising, this book forces us to think deeper about what authenticity and fakery really mean, at a time when such matters could hardly matter more. Lydia Pyne is the real deal.” —Ed Yong, science journalist and author of New York Times bestseller I Contain Multitudes

“An intriguing exploration of 'frauds, forgeries, and fakes'...Genuine history smartly explored. ” —Kirkus Reviews

“Author Pyne provides sufficient context to engage readers, explaining how curators and scientists have been duped in the past, and what they have learned as a result. This slightly off-beat account should be of great interest to collectors, amateur archaeologists, historians, and art connoisseurs.” —Booklist Online

“Historian Pyne (Seven Skeletons) offers a thoughtful examination of what it is to be fake, using case studies ranging from instances of outright deception to clearly labeled recreations, with plenty of gray area in between...Pyne's well-written survey illuminates the ramifications of various types of fakery, even while showing how murky the concept of what is fake can get.” —Publishers Weekly

“In turns thought-provoking and entertaining, Genuine Fakes is a vital book in a world of fake news and the search for authenticity. It is an eloquent and surprising exploration of the objects around us, which compels us to ask where we draw the line between real and fake. Sometimes authenticity is no more important than a good story.” —Kate Wiles, Senior Editor, History Today

“In this fascinating, interdisciplinary study, Lydia Pyne challenges us to reflect on the social factors that inspire the creation of replicas, simulations, and forgeries. Ambitious in scope and engagingly written, Genuine Fakes is an authentically wonderful read.” —Benjamin Gross, Vice President for Research and Scholarship, Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology

“I ended up learning a lot from the tidbits and explanations that accompanied the stories of fakes that were once passed off as real...The examples used also made me pause and think a lot about how fake can become real and why in some cases (diamonds and paleolithic cave paintings) this is beneficial and a more ethical route to travel down... overall this was an interesting plunge into what makes or changes our perceptions of what is real.” —Dear Author

“Pyne provides a convincing argument for why in the case studies presented we accept these 'genuine fakes' are real in their own right and how our times and culture influence what we say and will accept as real. I would recommend this book to people who like interesting stories from history, art and the natural sciences...” —Ghost Reader (BookTube)

“Nonfiction that is both information-dense AND fun to read is rare; Lydia Pyne has given us precisely that with Genuine Fakes. A book like this could easily become bone-dry, a slog of a read. But Pyne maintains an airiness throughout, treating the material with seriousness but never severity. Everything unfolds with a very light touch. The result is a book that is very difficult to put down.

The world is more than just real and not-real. There's room for things that are real and inauthentic, just as there's room for things that are authentic yet not real. Getting drawn into learning about those things is the real joy central to Genuine Fakes–-a joy that you really ought to experience for yourself.” —The Maine Edge

“The best chapters in Ms. Pyne's book, “Genuine Fakes: How Phony Things Teach Us About Real Stuff,” marry fine scientific explanation with cultural history and surprising twists. Her fascinating story of the development of artificial fruit flavorings, for example, reveals that the standard candy flavor for bananas resembles in taste the real bananas of the mid-19th century, when the flavor was first isolated.” —Wall Street Journal

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