The Truth, or Something Like It
Posted by mimi on Apr 13, 2008 in dish | 2 commentsWiley Miller’s Non Sequitur is one of my favorite comics, probably because it skates just this side of completely oddball, and also because it’s so sharp. Today’s strip is a zinger aimed right at the heart of publishing.
Danae, the strip’s erstwhile heroine, is young and way too smart for her own good. Today, she’s gathering material for a science fiction story, traveling to prehistoric times, then meeting up with aliens. Once she starts writing, though, she says she’s changing her story to a memoir, since, “it’s more marketable that way.” “I don’t think remembering a dream counts as a memoir,” her best friend (okay, her horse) says. Not a problem for our Danae. “Apparently, you’re not familiar with publishing’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” she says.
Had to laugh at that. Oprah’s been conned twice with “memoirs,” James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces the more famous of the two, followed by Margaret B. Jones’s Love and Consequences. Consequences, supposedly written by a biracial former gangbanger about her tough upbringing in foster homes, was actually penned by Margaret Seltzer, a white suburban girl from the San Fernando Valley with nothing tougher in her upbringing than choosing whether to shop at Abercrombie or Hollister. And yet reviewers ate this book up, the same way they devoured Frey’s, congratulating the brave authors on their survival skills and their gripping stories.
Too bad the stories were fakes, huh? And what is it about the rest of us voyeurs that we are so easily duped? Are our lives so mundane, so boring and same-old, same-old, that we eat up fantastical stories about drug addiction and drug selling so we can feel good that we live in the ‘burbs and can leave bikes outside at night without worrying that they’ll disappear before morning? Believe me, I’m not slighting people with actual problems–I work in the ‘hood, remember? I guess the thing that upsets me about these alleged “memoirs” is that they’re borrowing fame through false pretenses. As if fame were the goal. If it is, that’s a sorrier commentary than the fact that these writers are falsifying whole lives for their, and our, entertainment.
Check out the strip here (be sure to select the April 13 comic).
It’s very sad that people feel the need to do this. A while ago after one of the infamous ‘memoir’ books got outed as a fake I got caught up on another forum discussing this and some people surmised that maybe it’s easier to get published if it’s written as a memoir. Me? I have no clue why someone would lie on such a large scale, but maybe that’s what drove some of those people. I also think it’s sad that many publishers don’t check the facts. With fiction there’s obviously no need to, but w/ a memoir, I mean, come on! It’s just plain irresponsible. Great comic btw 🙂
That’s interesting. I actually just interviewed a woman for a magazine who wrote a wonderful memoir and she was super careful to make sure she fact checked everything and had proof (receipts, etc..) to prove the book was a true memoir.