Word: impostor
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...these people are professionals who secretly believe that they have been overestimated, and that at any moment the truth about them will out. According to two new books, their private feelings of fraudulence are shared by an estimated 70% of all successful individuals. In The Impostor Phenomenon (Peachtree Publishers, Ltd.; $14.95), Dr. Pauline Rose Clance, a professor of psychology at Georgia State University who first identified the syndrome, explains that many such impostors are perfectionists who can never meet their own standards...
...agent. Eventually it became The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, the 1988 book that got him noticed immediately as a young writer on the rise. "I've been very lucky all my life," he says. "You can't help but feel that you don't deserve it. You're an impostor, impersonating a successful person...
...novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), released just after his death. Total Recall (from the story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale") followed in 1990, then the French Barjo (from Confessions of a Crap Artist) and Screamers (from "Second Variety"). This year, two more: the O.K. Impostor and now Minority Report...
...would have been stuck for a what-if plot for its year-end inspirationals. Michael Sloane's script butters the Capra-corn with another '40s touchstone: Preston Sturges' Hail the Conquering Hero, about a 4-F fellow mistaken as a war hero when he returns home. Here the unwilling impostor is a screenwriter (Carrey) who escapes Hollywood when he's marked for blacklisting and ends up an amnesiac in a town claiming him as its own. Suddenly he's got a father (Landau), a girlfriend (Holden) and the burden of greatness...
...felt a little bit like an impostor,” Harte said. “I’m not in the greatest shape, but it was a lot of fun.” He finished in 2:35, a few minutes slower than his personal best...