47 pages • 1 hour read
Clare PooleyThe Authenticity Project
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Difficulty of Authenticity
Authenticity is a feeling and an expression of absolute truth. In The Authenticity Project, characters strive for authenticity in their lives by opening themselves up to vulnerability. Being an authentic person is difficult because it requires that people take risks and open themselves up to judgment. Ultimately, this novel supports the idea that authenticity, though difficult, is important.
Hazard is a man struggling between addiction and sobriety. Facing his authentic self is difficult because he doesn’t know who that is. Drugs and alcohol obscure Hazard’s true personality, making him behave like a jerk to himself and others. In his addiction, Hazard finds bad behavior funny and uses women for fun. When Hazard decides to get sober, he makes an agreement with himself to find out who the real Hazard is. While sober, Hazard experiences depths of emotion he used to repress with drugs and alcohol. By navigating these emotions, Hazard can find out his authentic self. But Hazard must also contend with his past and his reputation, making the hill to authenticity a steep one to climb. Hazard doesn’t truly allow himself to be vulnerable until after his relapse. In the aftermath, his new friends find him fragile in a way they had never seen before. This adds dynamism to Hazard’s personhood. In coming to terms with his addiction and being open about his darker side, Hazard finds peace in sobriety and true friendship in others.
Julian starts “The Authenticity Project” with a lie. His wife Mary is not dead, but the reality of his actions that led to Mary leaving him are too painful for Julian to deal with. By asking for others to be authentic while being inauthentic himself, Julian poses a challenge to authenticity. Julian may have lied about his age or his past, but his depressions are real, as are his glittering personality and joie de vivre. Therefore, Julian is dishonest but not always inauthentic. Through Julian’s narrative, Pooley questions what authenticity means. Even though “The Authenticity Project” begins with a lie, the human connections it nurtures are real. Julian’s character development is a journey to authenticity. It is difficult for Julian to live in the world in his honest identity because the world is painful and fraught with challenges. However, when Mary comes back into his life and shows him a path to forgiveness, Julian finds authenticity for the first time in his life. Celebrity parties and public adoration do not ultimately give Julian the love he believes he wants. Instead, he must come to terms with his dishonesty to let go and live a fulfilling life. Julian’s death comes right after finding his authenticity, highlighting that authenticity is the ultimate freedom of self.
Though it is easier to create a veneer of falsehood as a way of protection against other people, Pooley’s novel celebrates the difficult journey to authenticity.
True Connection Requires Compassion
In The Authenticity Project, a major internal and external conflict is the lack of compassion characters have for themselves and others. Pooley shows her reader that judging others is really a symptom of judging ourselves. This judgment can hold us back from developing true connections with other people.
Monica is the prime example of this conflict. Monica judges herself for being single, childless, and strapped for cash in her new business venture. Without the supportive presence of her mother, Monica feels lost in her life. She believes that finding love and becoming a mother will help fill the voids in her life. However, she writes about these goals in the journal as though they are slightly shameful. Monica has a difficult time owning her true self and her ambitions. Because Monica judges herself, she believes that others judge her. When she finds out that Hazard had set Riley up with the journal to find Monica, Monica suspects Hazard of mocking her vulnerabilities.
Though Monica extends generosity to others, she doesn’t believe that others will return this generosity. She perceives others as having ulterior motives and makes inaccurate judgments. She automatically assumes Hazard and Alice are vapid because they seem effortlessly popular. She finds Alice superficial, and wrongly assumes that Alice’s life is easy and perfect. Alice embodies everything Monica wants and worries she doesn’t deserve: good looks, a husband, and a baby. By judging Alice, Monica replicates the treatment she believes she gets from others. Monica must confront her own low self-esteem before she can be open to being wrong about other people, which leads to friendship with Alice and love with Hazard.
Alice learns a similar lesson. She is an Instagram influencer, so she constructs a visual image of her life for her followers that exudes perfection. However, Alice is deeply unhappy with her marriage and sometimes with her child. Alice protects herself through her Instagram account. If everything else is falling apart around her, she can at least use social media to pretend that she can keep the pieces of her life together. Alice practices inauthenticity to avoid dealing with conflict. Therefore, Alice’s public-facing life is characterized by loneliness. To be seen as happy, she objectifies herself. In doing so, she avoids negative judgment of her life, but she also avoids the opportunity to create environments of compassion.
The Hazards of Distraction
Several characters of The Authenticity Project distract themselves in different ways that prevent them from fully living.
Julian uses fame as a coping mechanism. Without a public persona, Julian descends into depression. He wants to feel admired and seen as a man of impeccable style and flair. He dives into celebrity life whenever he is given the opportunity, but this life is hollow. Fashion and art world icons don’t care about Julian for the person he is. Therefore, while Julian believes that an avid socialite life is the foundation of a good life, it is simply a distraction from confronting his true vulnerabilities.
Monica has an obsessive compulsion to clean that stems from losing her mother at a young age. In reality, scientists aren’t sure what causes obsessive-compulsive disorder but suspect a combination of genetic predisposition, structural differences in the brain, and environmental stressors that trigger underlying biological processes. As of the year of the book’s publication, research does not indicate that OCD is a “neurosis” that expresses inner psychological or emotional stuntedness. Nevertheless, this is how Pooley treats it, and she employs a more psychoanalytic (unscientific, but symbolic) narrative for the disorder: Monica’s symptoms manifest her unconscious conflict. Because Monica learned how little control she had in the world, obsessive cleaning gives Monica a false sense of control. Her OCD is a psychological condition, but it is also a barrier to Monica addressing the root causes of her anxiety. After her mother’s death, Monica uses obsessive cleaning and organization as a way of making sense of the world and therefore living in it. But Monica doesn’t live to her full capabilities because of this OCD. Her desire for control prevents her from being open to unpredictable adventures that can bring love and light to her life.
Hazard has the most obvious issue with distraction via his self-medication. He uses drugs and alcohol to dim his emotions. He believes that being high or drunk is a type of home, but his sobriety teaches him that this is really an obstacle to authentic living, which is about embracing fully both dark and happy moments. Hazard can’t access either if he is drunk or high. By using substances, Hazard keeps himself away from a life that is multi-layered.
Alice uses social media as her form of distraction. In constructing a veneer of perfection, Alice believes she can fake it until she makes it. She may not be happy, but if she can look happy to others, she can pretend that her life is not as full of conflict as it is. She uses social media as an escape, which places her in a false life. Until Alice can confront her real life, she can use her fake life as a shield. However, Alice needs to implode her fake life to live an authentically happy one.
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By Clare Pooley
