Fake Memoirs - Week 7 Prompt

While reading through The New Yorker article (Menand, 2018), I learned that readers are actually lied to way more often that I ever thought. Whether it is passing off exaggerated events as part of their own lives (like James Frey did) or pretending to be a different person all together (like Daniel James and apparently a ton of other authors) there are many books that are not what they seem.

James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” was a popular memoir chosen by Oprah for her book club selection in 2005. This memoir talked about Frey’s addiction to drugs and alcohol and the time he spent at a treatment center (History.com Editors, 2011). It was later discovered that Frey had lied about some of the details included in his memoir. In his book he claimed to have been in jail for 87 days and to have had a root canal without anesthesia. Frey eventually admitted though that he actually only spent a few hours in jail and he could not remember whether the dentist had used Novocain or not. Many readers were upset to find out that some parts of this book were untrue and Frey’s publisher even “settled a class-action lawsuit brought by readers who claimed they had been defrauded.”

The New Yorker article (Menand, 2018) claims that there are generally three defenses for works that exaggeration the truth like this:

1. The theory that even if that exact event did not happen to the author, it happened to someone. This makes it a true life story.

2. These fabrications and exaggerations convey “what it is really like” to be Guatemalan or in recovery or whatever life story the author is writing about. 

3. The literature professor’s defense: “the argument that the distinction between fact and fiction, although it may appear fundamental, is a fairly recent development in the history of writing, only two or three centuries old.”

There is a quote in support of defense #1 that says, “Readers don’t care whether these things literally happened to James Frey, because they didn’t buy the book to find out about James Frey. They bought it to learn about addiction and recovery. James Frey’s job as a writer is only to convey that experience.” I disagree with this statement. If you are telling me that everything in this book is true about your life then I expect those events to have actually occurred. If you want to write about the life of a group of people in general and the things that happen to them then I expect to have a disclaimer about that. If as an author you tell your readers that something is fact, and then it turns out that to all be lies, you start to lose credibility. 

I think Frey could have written his book exactly like he did if he would have been honest about it. He could have said that some parts of it were exaggerated because he knows that some people have experienced these things and he wanted to make their life stories known. Instead, he claimed these life stories as his own and to make it worse, when the truth first started coming out he didn’t confess to what he did, he doubled down. Frey and his mother appeared on “Larry King Live” to defend the book and Oprah even called in to support the book (History.com Editors, 2011). It was only two weeks later that Oprah invited him back onto her show and questioned him about the validity of the book. This is when he admitted that he had “altered and embellished” certain details of his memoir. 

The other problem that the New Yorker article brought up was international hoaxes (Menand, 2018). In this situation “the hoaxer is often white and the fake persona is often a person of color.” I don't know if I this is just because don't keep up with any type of news but I was genuinely surprised at how often this happens.

The example given was of the novel “Famous All Over Town”. This novel was released in 1983 by the author Danny Santiago. The book told the story of a young Chicano and his coming of age in East Los Angeles. After seventeen months of being critically acclaimed, it was revealed that the author was actually a white writer named Daniel James. James and his wife had apparently been volunteers for twenty years in the neighborhood where “Famous All Over Town” is set. James even put on the book jacket that Danny Santiago grew up in Los Angeles. James claimed that “the identity of the writer is irrelevant. What matters is the contents." He also stated “Nobody’s going to be hurt if the book’s any good.” I don’t necessarily believe that this is true. Would it not be hurtful for the Latino community to be proud to have a Latino author win awards and be critically acclaimed, just to find out that it was actually a white author behind this story?

I agree with Menand when he says that hoaxes are unethical. What really surprised me though was that after these hoaxes were discovered, it seems like people stopped caring about it and nothing happens. Menand (2018) even says in his article "If the books are popular, it is often in everyone’s interest to continue pretending they’re genuine". I find that kind of crazy. I'm not sure what I expect to happen to these books but pretending that they are genuine after the fact is not what I would have expected.

Resources:

History.com Editors. (2011, April 13). Oprah Winfrey confronts author James Frey over lying | January 26, 2006. History. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/oprah-winfrey-takes-james-frey-to-task-for-lying

Menand, L. (2018, December 3). Literary hoaxes and the ethics of authorship. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/literary-hoaxes-and-the-ethics-of-authorship