Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Split in Two
- 2 Hypocrisy and Jesus
- 3 Antihypocrisy: Looking Bad in Order to Be Good
- 4 Virtues Naturally Immune to Hypocrisy
- 5 Naked Truth: Hey, Wanna F***?
- 6 In Divine Services and Other Ritualized Performances
- 7 Say It Like You Mean It: Mandatory Faking and Apology
- 8 Flattery and Praise
- 9 Hoist with His Own Petard
- 10 The Self, the Double, and the Sense of Self
- 11 At the Core at Last: The Primordial Jew
- 12 Passing and Wishing You Were What You Are Not
- 13 Authentic Moments with the Beautiful and Sublime?
- 14 The Alchemist: Role as Addiction
- 15 “I Love You”: Taking a Bullet versus Biting One
- 16 Boys Crying and Girls Playing Dumb
- 17 Acting Our Roles: Mimicry, Makeup, and Pills
- 18 False (Im)modesty
- 19 Caught in the Act
- Afterword
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
1 - Introduction: Split in Two
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Split in Two
- 2 Hypocrisy and Jesus
- 3 Antihypocrisy: Looking Bad in Order to Be Good
- 4 Virtues Naturally Immune to Hypocrisy
- 5 Naked Truth: Hey, Wanna F***?
- 6 In Divine Services and Other Ritualized Performances
- 7 Say It Like You Mean It: Mandatory Faking and Apology
- 8 Flattery and Praise
- 9 Hoist with His Own Petard
- 10 The Self, the Double, and the Sense of Self
- 11 At the Core at Last: The Primordial Jew
- 12 Passing and Wishing You Were What You Are Not
- 13 Authentic Moments with the Beautiful and Sublime?
- 14 The Alchemist: Role as Addiction
- 15 “I Love You”: Taking a Bullet versus Biting One
- 16 Boys Crying and Girls Playing Dumb
- 17 Acting Our Roles: Mimicry, Makeup, and Pills
- 18 False (Im)modesty
- 19 Caught in the Act
- Afterword
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
It happened again today: I was bluffing my way through some material in my Property class about which I knew no more than what the teaching manual told me, it being the extent of my researches on the topic. On such occasions I present the subject in the pompous style in which professorial banalities are often uttered, meaning thereby to prevent student questions by elevating myself to the regions of the unquestionable. God forbid one of them should start thinking deeply about the stuff and expose the limits of my knowledge.
Then it hits: all of a sudden my voice transforms itself into a parody of my father's voice, an imitation of the voice he used when he was doing his best to assert pompous authority. How does this happen? My voice seems to have acquired a will of its own as it seeks to lower itself into the resonant ranges his had as a gift of nature. My sisters and I would often burst into giggles when our father assumed this style of dominion. The students at least won't giggle, having been beaten down by myriad professors into resigned acceptance of – nay, into slavish respect for – pompous authority. And even if I were to revert to my natural voice I wouldn't succeed in getting it back to normal. Compared with the phony version of my father's it would sound like a whine, and I would find myself correcting it into something utterly alien. Better stick with Dad's until the class ends.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Faking It , pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003