Lies, Damned Lies and Memoirs
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on … who? The author, and who else? Publishers? Readers?
Margaret Jones, white/native American foster child growing up with black family amid gangbangers in South LA, pens acclaimed memoir. Now she’s outed as a fake – not just any fake, but Margaret Seltzer, a privately schooled white girl from Sherman Oaks, who, as "Jones," even gave broadcast interviews about her book in tough-girl cadences.
Been there, done that, homegirl. Twenty-five years ago, East LA homeboy Danny Santiago wrote his own story, a novel called "Famous All Over Town," about his get-down life running with the wild boys. It was a very good book. It won awards; it was part of a song lyric; it was required reading in schools, literature from a real East LA life.
And it too, was fake. Danny Santiago was Daniel James, a once-blacklisted screenwriter who had worked on the Chaplin tour de force, "The Great Dictator." He had also done social work in the 1950s and ‘60s among Latinos, which is how he knew something of what he wrote. Margaret Seltzer says she did her research by listening to friends’ stories, and tapping out her book sitting among Black Panthers and just regular kids at a Starbucks in South LA.
Both authors were outed – Seltzer, after the glowing reviews for ``Love and Consequences’’ started coming out but before her book tour was to begin this week, but James, not for a long while, not until the novel had won awards and been acclaimed as an authentic new Latino voice.
We expect actors to make us think he is someone or something else. We don’t mind when female novelists write feelingly about male characters, and vice versa. Old writers create touching young characters, and sometimes vice versa. But we know the author’s age, and gender, and that it’s a novel we’re reading.
Only the memoir that sets itself and us up for hopes and disappointment. Would "Love and Consequences" have been published and praised if it had been called a novel? Especially one written by a privileged white woman? Does our hunger for "true stories" feed this phony memoir machine?
The judges who gave "Famous" a literary prize were to have considered only literary merit, but supposedly admitted that if they’d known the author was an old white guy and not a young Latino, they might have had second thoughts.
What’s the difference? And why does it matter to us?
You tell me.
Well, was she writting with the pretense that it was not a fictional work? If so, then its fraud in my opinion.
Posted by: Burnt chef | March 04, 2008 at 06:10 PM
What’s with this compulsively pedantic demand for “authenticity” in literature? Jones has written a piece of fiction couched in yet another fiction. This is more than mere art: it is approaching a Gesamtkunstwerk. Yet the shocked, shocked pedants are treating it as it were a doctoral dissertation. Jones should be proud of her small achievement and the anal schoolmarms should lighten up!
Posted by: Wolfram | March 04, 2008 at 06:34 PM
Is that what is happening? People want "true stories"? Then how do you explain the recent rise in the superhero and fantasy genre? I think people are tired of reality TV and creative non-fiction. I think what's at work here is the author/hoaxster wanting to be a "superhero" or be part of a real-life "fantasy." I think if an author can successfully write a convincing "real-life" story, then that's merit enough. Do you know how difficult it is to write convincing dialogue?
I'm a writer, and while my life has interesting enough stuff to warrant "memoir," I'm happy with turning my life into fiction. Faking a memoir to win prizes/fame is naivete, because your lies cannot stand the test of time with your second, third, and fourth books. There are plenty of prizes and fame to be had by writers of "fiction."
Posted by: Alan from Seattle | March 04, 2008 at 06:45 PM
The book was within Non-fiction...had it been listed under Fiction, then no problem. The line between reality and pseudo-reality/fantasy is becoming more difficult for the general population to differentiate. Publishing houses and authors should have the integrity to clearly define that the work being published is truly non-fiction.
Posted by: LCS | March 04, 2008 at 06:58 PM
I'm with you, Wolfram! Give me Pierre Menard's Don Quixote over Cervantes' any day.
Posted by: Tim Cavanaugh | March 04, 2008 at 07:01 PM
Great novels are great simply because they can, via fiction, bring the of light of truth to our life - that's the genius of good fiction. Memoirs, etc., bring the truth of life to our fictions, giving us the courage to live honestly.
I'm afraid this young lady failed at both, and no amount of doublespeak about "fiction within fiction" or whatever other devices we might conjure can justify what she did.
She's less an artist and more a con-artist. Could it be sheer greed? Or something more insidious - a high school prank - to see how far she could get?
So it goes ... and may she never write again, until she honestly engages the reader with brilliant fiction or faithful memoir.
Posted by: Tom | March 04, 2008 at 07:50 PM
the book industry wants to push best sellers nd the editors will accept just about anything without ever bothering to do any real editing or background checks on what they promote--so actually the publisher is a sucker and the editor just complies with being a lazy reader-- rather thn accept several well written books that they can verify, they push one or two for big promotion and get their faces covered with egg-- and book prizes can always be renegged, evven easier than Olympian Gold Medals for drugging-- no you've got it, no you don't. With the amount of ongoing plagiarism, including White house leading staff and NYT "journalists", who gives a damn about a minor detail whether a memoir is in fact, fact or fiction-- especially when you have a President whose staff can hiree bloggers to spread information and a war cabinet to fabricate threats--
who cares about real or unreal? Bush goes about screaming about US as threatened nation, but he can't see the reality of a threatened planet and species...
so who cares about another thousand little lies faabricated as a memoir...
certainly not the publisher or editor and not the american public. It's just a small inconvenience for economical interests--now all those covers will have to be overstamped with labels and reclassified-- oh my, doesn't that add to the marketing budget
but just think of the counterweight and all the interest of interviews and top lines in the entertainment news-- now more people will rush out to buy the book.
Posted by: pogo | March 04, 2008 at 08:06 PM
Lordy, lordy! Who cares if this silly book is based on fact or fiction? What's the difference these days in this bizzarro world? If it's a good read who cares? All of the great works of literatures are TOTAL LIES ANYWAY and they're called FICTION for just that reason. What is this lurid aburd obsession with reality in books? Now if people actually cared about reality in reality - such as politics and cared anything about the consequences of lies there, then the endeavor would be worth the effort. But folks, this is just one more silly stupid little book, so get over it and get on with it. Instead of recalling the thing, if it's such a good read, the publisher should rush 1 million or more to press - bet it would sell out fast now that it's got all of this free publicity.
Posted by: BeachDude | March 04, 2008 at 11:25 PM
I think a lot of folks are missing the point. There are intriguing racial and greed implications here--and I don't mean on the author's part...
Posted by: ChrisChambers | March 05, 2008 at 11:17 AM