'Bunk' Is Encyclopedic, Fascinating — And Frustrating
Kevin Young's new book puts forth an instantly convincing pairing of race and hoaxing — both a "fake thing pretending to be real." But he loses readers' trust with knotty, overly aphoristic writing.
Hoaxes work when we want them to. These longings can be benign: think of Herman Rosenblat's about a girl who kept him alive by throwing apples over the fence of a concentration camp, and meeting her years later on a blind date. Who wouldn't want to believe a love story like that? Or they can be malign: Think of "Jimmy," the black, 8-year-old. What does our national eagerness to believe that story say about us?
