Hoax Diaries
Electric Lit had a great piece on hoax diaries. According to the article, “a hoax diary [is] a work of fiction that is passed off as an authentic journal. Not to be confused with a memoir, a true hoax diary is somewhat rare—and their outcomes and reception are not always predictable.” Meaning, memoirs are sometimes fictionalized and challenged (cough, James Frey), but hoax diaries are “found” (though really created) works in diary form, pretending to be real journals.
Why make one? Because “there is a thrill, too, for readers to believe we have access to a once-private document, to pry into someone’s psyche.” Memoirs are written to be read. Diaries are not.
Though it made me wonder if they still hold the same weight after the advent of blogs. When so many people write out their diary online, is it as thrilling to find one offline? And to that end, there have been plenty of fake blogs over the years, though it feels like it has been a long time since I’ve seen one. But there were a handful in the early years of the ALI blogosphere—fake infertility or loss blogs. And perhaps there are still but I’m out of the loop.
Your thoughts?
2 comments
I hadn’t heard of a hoax diary before reading this post, but I tend to agree with you. Given the ready availability of personal blogs — which are really just an online diary — I’m not sure that this would interest me unless it was written by someone who was of particular interest to me.
The first thing I thought of when I read this post were the names Clifford Irving & Howard Hughes. Irving claimed to have ghostwritten an autobiography for Hughes back in the early 1970s, but it was ultimately revealed as a fake/forgery. I read “Go Ask Alice” around the same time, as young teen or pre-teen. It made a huge impression on me. My copy is probably still down in my parents crawl space somewhere.