Content area
Full Text
Nick Groom. The Forger's Shadow: How Forgery Changed the Course of Literature. London. Picador. 2002. 351 pages. L20 / $29. ISBN 0-330-374372-X
IN 1996, Fragments, a young boy's harrowing account of life at a Nazi concentration camp, brought many to tears. The book won the author, Swiss clarinet-maker Binjamin Wilkomirski, instant fame and recognition. It was hailed as a landmark in what Elie Wiesel has called the literature of testimony. Its authenticity was never in doubt, that is, until the author decided to blow the whistle on himself that same year. He described in shocking detail how he went about writing his forgery. Now considered a villain, Wilkomirski, like history's many other great forgers, has had to take the reversal of his fortune in stride. What his case demonstrated once more was that in a culture organized around property, patents, and copyrights, authenticity was not a matter with which to be trifled.
Postmodernism, not surprisingly, has an entirely different take on forgery. Being a tireless champion of non-identity, of non-originality, of the made-up, of the recycled, of the anarchic, of the irrational, postmodernism sees no foul play in Wilkomirski's action, nor does Nick Groom. As the title implies, The Forger's Shadow is a defense of non-originality and fakery. According to Groom, the study...