Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Why lie?
The NY Times has an article today about yet another "memoirist" who fabricated almost all of her book. I haven't read any of the books mentioned in the article, but the argument posed by the author in this case rings false to me: "I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it." What about writing a novel - those have been known to have a large impact on people. Or doing an extended investigative journalism piece? Why fabricate an entire history that was eventually brought down by the author's sister? Did she not think anyone would ever find out?! I accept that anyone writing anything other than a purely factual, documentation based biography will have elaborations and some fabrications - who has a perfect memory? - but that is very different than making up an entire past. If it is a compelling story as memoir, it should still be a compelling story as fiction. If not, and the interest in the story was simply because it was "true," then it probably wasn't any good to begin with.
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3 comments:
I had exactly the same thought. When most compelling fiction is strongly influenced by real-life experience anyway, why risk alienating your audience with fake autobiography? I think your last remark is very much to the point, though: the woman might have been right to wonder if anyone would go for her story if it were just a "story." I don't think it's coincidence that this woman's book and others that have recently been similarly attacked are about the hard-scrabble urban upbringing, the drugs/jail/guns/etc.-- in other words, stuff which is tired old news, but which suddenly sounds more interesting if there's a promise of inside dope on that world from someone who actually lived in it. After all, we're used to assuming that the people who live in it are not people with the education or the leisure to produce literature!
You'd have thought after the fiasco with A Million Little Pieces authors might have learned... I read AMLP and was dubious. I wasn't the only one. Don't people realise in this day and age info is so easy to obtain that these sorts of fabrications will out? There's another issue: it certainly does narrow one's personal options for careers. I doubt she'll get published again!
The Paper Cuts blog at the NYTimes pretty much agrees with you, mdvlist - that Americans seem to prefer "authenticity," and the chance to gloat that their lives are better than that. Here's the url: http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/stranger-than-truthiness/
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