The Andre Daily News would write the headline like this: "Another Affluent White American, Desperate for Credibility, Fictionalizes Life in Memoir."
Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin, is pulling Margaret Seltzer's memoir, "Love and Consequences," from bookstores, and offering refunds to book buyers after discovering that Seltzer cooked much of the material.
Check out the NYT coverage of the fallout.
Seltzer's memoir, which chronicles her hard knock life as a gang thug in Los Angeles, contains numerous fabrications.
Seltzer is not part American Indian; she's a white kid from Sherman Oaks, Calif., an affluent Los Angeles suburb.
Seltzer did not grow up a foster home nomad; she graduated from an exclusive Episcopal day school.
Seltzer did not experience the events detailed in her book; she collected the stories from South Central youths while sitting in a Starbuck's.
While it's perfectly OK to use composite characters in memoirs--just how good is your memory--taking someone else's story and passing it off as one's own is weak. If there's a story to tell, just tell it truthfully. The book market sure prefers a heavy tell-all to a strong piece of journalism, but the minds of your readers and the respect of your sources are better served by your honesty, not your marketability.
What's a big advance worth anyway? A new car or a down payment on a home. Maybe you can pay off those student loans or finance the writer's life for a while. Bah. Grocery money is way overrated when it comes to artistic credibility.
Check out my "Bold-Faced Liars" post to further understand my theory of lame memoirists: specifically, James Frey and Augusten Burroughs.
0 comments:
Post a Comment