Week Seven Prompt - Fake Memoirs and Literary Hoaxes: Reflections

For our prompt this week, I want you to think about fake memoirs, author mills (James Patterons), and celebrity inspired book clubs. Basically write a readers' response to one of the articles you are reading for this week (see syllabus or links in this post for readings) - or talk about a time when a book or author that made headlines affected you personally or your work.

Reflection 

Fake memoirs and "misery lit" hoaxes perpetuate a fraud on the reader who invests more emotional weight in the account due to its perceived authenticity. For some readers, this deception may be very painful, like a betrayal. (Particularly if the memoir details abuse, or recovery from addiction.) My personal response to these hoxes is usually a psychic eyeroll and a mental shrug. It comes as no surprise to me that fake memoirs like James Frey's A Million Little Pieces (2003) were initially submitted for publication and rejected classified as fiction. Some might say, "What is a memoir, but one person's recollection of events?" As anyone who compares memories with family members or friends about a shared event, accounts differ according to individual perspectives. Memory is tricky, its often colored by emotion and by the personal vantage point of the witness, perhaps it is incomplete or partial, but it is evidence none the less of one's experience. This is one component of a memoir, the limits and potential insight of personal perspective. Embellishment, lying, fraud  and deception that are part of a hoax built upon outrageous craven lies, is something all together different. The latter seems to  the case with Frey's 2003 controversial best seller.

One of the best memoirs that I've enjoyed -Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors- encountered criticism for alleged embellishment of the "truth". I recall feeling a bit dismayed upon hearing of the controversy and dispute over its authenticity ( I was less jaded then.) But as NPR's Lynn Neary states in "One family, one saga, three memoirs, many competing truths" other family members, the author's mother and brother, have varying accounts, and Dr. Turcotte, the real life psychiatrist Burroughs' describes in his memoir, went so far as to sue the writer for invasion of privacy among other things. Neary notes that Arizona State professor Lee Gutkind (a creative non-fiction expert) asserts that a memoir is, "your own personal truth", and that truth and memory may not always be precisely accurate. (I can attest to this anytime I have to fill out a ten year background check or rewrite a resume.)

Perhaps hoaxes and frauds like these are mostly harmless, (they certainly have a long history) except when, as The Smoking Gun detailed, the real lives of people impacted by more egregious lies are involved. Burrough's suffered irreparable damage to his relationship with his mother over his memoir's publication, but this is not uncommon among families, whether allegations and recollections are published or circulated by word of mouth. Christina Crawford, author of my favorite tell-all Mommie Dearest, has had her share of detractors, as defenders of her movie star mother Joan to this day say she is lying about her relationship with her adopted mother. (I think she's telling the truth, but that's just my opinion.) But Joan Crawford is dead, and though she can't sue from beyond the grave, her legacy as an actress remains intact, despite what she may or may not have done to abuse her children. But what of the stories of people James Frey "ebellished", like the teenage train crash victims he claims to have been involved with? That's really disgusting and despicable, and absolutely morally repugnant. The reality is, whether its high level White House aides in Fire and Fury, a celebrity's fan club or a family member, what people say happened and what they are willing to admit happened and what actually happened may be a combination of truth, half-truth or fiction.

But, I would argue a memoir is one person's truth, whether others find it plausible or totally factually accurate. (For instance, Guardian reviewer Bernadine Evaristo (2013) disputed whether the elderly Maya Angelou could realistically be reliable to recall verbatim conversations from fifty years before in related in her memoir,  Mom & Me & Mom (2013). (Disclosure, another absolutely favorite of mine.)

But unlike Fire and Fury, which is ostensibly the product of reporting and journalism, and a memoir -autobiography and honest memoirs cannot be held to journalist standards. Fire and Fury can be fact checked, and it has. Politifact found it rife with factual errors and poorly sourced evidence, but it is also full of quotes that have not been denied and resulted in Steve Bannon's ouster! No one can deny Michael Wolff was there, an eyewitness with complete access to very verbose White House staff eager to share their misery with him! As he stated on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert:, "It's the Trump White House...everybody is lying in their own particular way because that's what you do in the Trump White House." But how a daughter remembers her own mother, well that's her business, isn't it?

In the current environment of "truthiness", "post-truth" and disinformation it is vitally important we understand the nuances of personal recollection in memoirs and the difference between  memoirs, misinformation, hoaxes and frauds. There is such a thing as truth, and one's own truth, and objective reality- but lies are lies, and Frey it appears, laughed all the way to the bank on his embellished recollections. And yet, truth is knowable, we know that because, facts are facts, we know he lied and embellished his memoirs!

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