Saturday, March 15, 2008

All those phony memoirs...

The New Criterion has a short article (more a summary than anything else) about those fake or embellished memoirs that have been in the news so much lately. I was struck, though, by the last couple of paragraphs, specifically about Margaret B. Jones' (aka Margaret Seltzer) Love and Consequences*:

"Ms Seltzer, along with her partners in literary crime, deserves some credit at least for crafting a hoax that she must have known would appeal to the sentimental sensibility about the poor and downtrodden that is pervasive among reviewers at publications like the Times. It is more than a little interesting that contemporary novelists, when they stoop to such fabrications, invariably come up with harrowing stories about addiction, mental illness, sexual abuse, family dysfunction, prostitution, gang wars, and life on the run or among the down and out. On rarely hears of fabrications from the poor (or even by the rich) about life in the suburbs, boardrooms, or country clubs. Our novelists, even when they lie or especially when they lie, reveal what sells among publishers, reviewers, and contemporary readers.

It is sometimes said that what artists esteem is a sign of what is valued in a society. If that is so, then we may be more trouble than we think."

*More info about that here--including how her sister turned her in! It's also interesting to look at this Amazon page--filled with angry and disappointed responses from readers.

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