Even Delvey’s lawyer argued that she was a “fake it until you make it” hustler. The phrase can be traced to a song written by none other than two very talented New Yorkers, Simon & Garfunkel. Released in the summer of 1968, the lyrics stem from Simon’s insecurities, declaring that despite being a wildly successful musician, he felt like an imposter. “Just watch me fake it, fake it till I make it, make it”.
Mastering the art of deception, however, isn’t enough on its own. A prerequisite for a con-artist? Narcissism. Doubt will kill any con game. And in New York, there’s no shortage of narcissism, “because New York is special, people who want to be special come here. Striving people come to centres of excellence and achievement,” says Frank Yeomans, director of training at the Personality Disorders Institute of Weill Medical College. And with Delvey loftily calling her foundation after own name, and her Netflix character describing herself as “a motherf***ing masterpiece”, it seems the socialite had no shortage of vanity.
From Wall Street to the streets, everywhere you look in New York, there is someone who has an angle. Walk through Central Park on a hot day and there will be people selling water bottles out of water coolers for $2 a bottle. You walk out of the subway and there’s a woman selling umbrellas from a table for $5. They create a need where previously there was none.
This informal economy, things that are illegal but tolerated, stems from the moving of factories overseas in the 1970s and the massive amount of job loss that happened in the 1980s. People had to think of other ways of getting income. This has filtered down to today and still forms so much of the city’s dynamic, shapes its culture.
Because ultimately, we all want a deal. And New York, a transactional city trading in money, status and cultural capital, is often where the most lucrative deals get made. As Pressler wrote: “[Anna] saw something others didn’t. Anna looked at the soul of New York and recognised that if you distract people with shiny objects, with large wads of cash, with the indicia of wealth, if you show them the money, they will be virtually unable to see anything else. And the thing was: It was so easy.”
Inventing Anna is on Netflix now
