Inspired Authenticity

When Ed McCarthy brought a collection of EdFrank jewelries to Childan, Childan thought to himself, “With these there is no problem of authenticity.” (147) At this point, Childan was dubious as to whether any of the artifacts he previously owned was indeed historically significant as they claimed to be or was a mere imitation. So, it would be proper to think that EdFrank jewelries were authentic since they didn’t claim to be what they were not. However, we know that both Frank and Ed were previously employed by W-M Corporation, the same company that was shipping imitations of Americana to Childan’s store. In that sense, the jewelries that they made were produced by hands that had become skilled at replicating art. Their creation of art must have been inspired by the art that they had been imitating for so long. So, I could not help but be a little skeptical when Paul said, “It is authentically a new thing on the face of the world.” (176)

That line of thought, in turn, made me question the authenticity of just any piece of art. Can we ever really create something entirely original? Every artist learns art from older pieces of art; most artists name a role model they look up to. Even a simple blog post we write is inspired by the books we read or the authors we like (or by the models decided upon by our education system and style guides). So, can anything ever be entirely new and authentic? And if it is not entirely authentic, is it fake? Does that suggest a scale for authenticity? For example, if I write a story that sounds a lot like something written by my favorite author, it might be considered less authentic than one that doesn’t sound so familiar. So, could there be different levels of authenticity? Like different layers of reality?

Once again, it is up to us to decide our own standards for authenticity, or to decide that there is perhaps no absolute authenticity. Either way, we all choose, consciously or unconsciously, our own personal truth about authenticity.