Authentic is another word for bogus

I know, that is not a stunning surprise to anyone who reads this blog. I had no idea, when I started writing this blog, what themes would emerge. I figured, was sincerely hoping, that some would. If I were to look back now and find no recurring themes, that would be a rather worrying thing. (Of course, if I was that inconsistent, I probably wouldn't notice.)

Anyway, one of the themes is authenticity; or, rather, one of the themes is that authenticity is a fraud.

I thought about that reading in the New York Times about John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley.

I should preface this by saying that Steinbeck is largely a forgotten guy nowadays and deservedly so. Like Sinclair Lewis, Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, and Joyce Carol Oates, he was writer whose fame was mostly a factor of his ability to reflect trendy intellectual ideas of his era back on the trendy intellectuals who produced those ideas in the first place.

But he was much beloved of liberal intellectuals of my parents age and, in fact, much beloved of both my parents. Worried that I had, as the old politically incorrect expression has, "gone off the reservation" a few years ago they gave me a copy of Travels With Charley a few years ago in the hopes that would bring me back. It didn't. I hated the book.

Here is what happens. Steinbeck and his dog Charley get in a camper van in the early 1960s and head out to find America. And before we sneer too much, it wasn't quite such a cliché at the time. Here is the thing, though: he didn't actually do it. Steinbeck may have thought about actually doing it but in the end he was too set in his ways and just made it up to get an America that conformed to what he wanted to find.

The only odd thing about it is that it took so long for the fraud to come to light. As the writer who figured it out, Bill Steigerwald of Reason, points out, uncovering the fraud was really grunt level research. The only credible reason for it not coming out long ago is that no one wanted to know.

And this is confirmed by the defences of Steinbeck from the academic world.For example, Jay Parini, who wrote a biography of Steinbeck said:

“I have always assumed that to some degree it’s a work of fiction. Steinbeck was a fiction writer, and here he’s shaping events, massaging them. He probably wasn’t using a tape recorder. But I still feel there’s an authenticity there.” 

"I still feel there's an authenticity there." In other words, he really wants to believe and that is all the confirmation he needs.

Oh well, that's okay then. Really, why even bother with truth, let's just ask intellectuals what they "sense" is "true" and go with that? Except of course, that intellectuals say the same thing without irony.  So long as the "truth" reinforces the right moral outlook, they don't much care.

One thing you can be sure of is this: if you are inclined to believe things that feel authentic to you, you will never be surprised. You'll be disappointed but never surprised because you'll be so used to being disappointed.