A few years back, my brother, fresh from his Japanese Language Proficiency exam, got in a job interview for a post in which Japanese was a requirement.
“Here it says you know Japanese,” the interviewer said, waving my brother’s CV. “Why should I believe you?”
“I have a Proficiency Certificate.”
“That’s just a piece of paper, for all I know you printed it in your basement.”
“Try me, do you have a text I can translate…?”
“I don’t know Japanese.”
“Well, if your company has Japanese customers, call one up and I’ll be able to talk to him to your satisfaction.”
“I won’t waste an international call for that. I’ll just assume you don’t know Japanese. CVs are always full of bullsh*t, anyway.”
This sort of self-mutilating preventive mistrust is bleeding into the literary scene – authors post artificially pumped-up bios, publishers doctor sales figures, and everybody seems to think positive reviews are fakes.
Now, my own bio is available by clicking on the link up there in the right corner. It’s not been doctored, fixed or pumped up.
And yet… maybe it’s fun.
Yes, It’s certainly fun.
So, why not devote today’s post to my Official Fake Biography?
Let’s see…
Davide Mana
Bestselling author and multi-awarded scientist and researcher1, Davide was born at the peak of the Summer of Love and spent his youth in multicultural Turin, Italy.
After graduating from the University of Turin, he traveled extensively2, touring the Andes and mato Grosso as a backpacking hitch-hiker; he finally settled in a baroque country estate in the sunny hills of Southern Piedmont3, where he grows his own biological, pasticide-free food.
A black belt in wing chung and tai chi4, a collector of fine books5, a world-renowned expert of Asian culture6, Davide is currently working on his second novel (which has already been optioned by James Cameron) , while consulting as a self-publishing guru a blogging evangelist and a teacher of traditional Argentine tango. In his spare time, he is doing voluntary work with the International Rescue Thunderbirds Team7.
He is currently evaluating the proposal of being the next Doctor Who.
The author at work.
Here.
Honestly dishonest.
It does not pretend to be the real thing, it does not presume you are so stupid you’ll believe it. I could even throw in a bit about being raised by apes in a secret Himalayan valley, for good measure, were it not basically disrespectful of my late mother.
And you?
What’s your fake bio?
- let’s start with a bang. ↩
- because you have to be a man of the world. ↩
- never mind the bitter cold, the snow and the dreary landscape through which the bumpkins roam ↩
- well, he read some books about the former and practices the latter in his courtyard. ↩
- e.g. cheap 1 cent used paperbacks ↩
- read books, went tomuseums and lectures ↩
- boy, I liked that series ↩
Karavansara 
3 February 2015 at 10:11
This fake CV reminds me Joachim Zelter’s book Schule der Arbeitslosen, a novel in which the students, among the other subjects, had to write entertainig CVs, exaggerating skills and past experiencies, or even faking their own.
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3 February 2015 at 13:05
Sadly, it is much more similar to a lot of CVs and bios one finds online.
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