Woman admits fabricating memoir

It wasn’t all that long ago when James Frey confessed that much of his memoir had been fabricated, only after Oprah had selected it for her book club and boosted its popularity – before the book came crashing back down to earth. So it seems incomprehensible that anyone would fabricate a memoir with the James Frey debacle still somewhat fresh in our collective literary memory.

Yet it has happened again. According to a very recent article I stumbled across in the New York Times, a woman has confessed to fabricating her memoir:

In "Love and Consequences," a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

That sounds like a very interesting read, until you find out that Margaret Jones is really Margaret Seltzer, who has lived a life of anything but violence and hardship:

…who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members.

Not even close. The publisher of the faux-memoir was quick to respond:

Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published "Love and Consequences," is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Ms. Seltzer’s book tour, which was scheduled to start on Monday in Eugene, Ore., where she currently lives.

I should also mention that this comes very close to another memoir-outing (even more recent than James Frey), when it was revealed that Misha Devonseca’s memoir about the holocaust also turned out to be a fake.

The bigger question that’s on my mind right now is "Why?" These people are obviously talented writers and could probably write a good piece of fiction (oh wait, they did). But seriously, why not just write a novel and market it as fiction. Did they really think they’d be able to get away with it?

Margaret Seltzer does offer a glimpse into her train of thought by saying it could have been ego as part of the reason she fabricated an entire memoir. I think that goes without saying, though.

The other question on my mind is what responsibility does the publisher have in all this? Is a publishing house supposed to take on the job of a fact-checker and make sure all these memoirs add up? That might be going a little too far. In the end I think that writers still have to take responsibility for their work and show a little integrity. Maybe publishers should start requiring that the authors of memoirs sign a statement that the memoir is factually accurate, and if it turns out to be otherwise, the author can be sued for breach of contract.

I don’t know if that’s the right answer either. I don’t want the world of publishing to get so restrictive that people become afraid to publish their book for fear of being sued. In the end, I think people should just be honest!

What do you think? Does the publisher share responsibility for what books they publish and their content? How can this be prevented in the future (or is that even possible)? Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Gang Memoir, Turning Page, Is Pure Fiction

Related Posts

• James Frey publishing new novel
• 5 Tips for Writing Stellar Non-Fiction!
• Is Oprah good for literature?
• Move over Kindle, Japan is way ahead in the ebook game!

Read More: Literary News