He, matter of factly, stated
that it had all been fraudulent,
that he, in fact, was that
fraud, spoken after every-
thing, all accouterments
like the clothes and the car
and the income had slidden
away and, such an admission,
in its own way, revealed a
set of core values that en-
abled him to see it and then
say it and as tragic as it had
become for him, how many
others never ever see the
seductive myth of the American
dream as simply a grifter’s
paradise?

*idea from an article in the New York Times by Megan O’Grady: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/t-magazine/mr-ripley.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab