Lies, Damn Lies, and . . . Memoirs?

The embellished, semi-autobiographical or pseudo autobiographical memoir has a long, distinguished history in Literature. Stephen Daedalus was James Joyce's proxy in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, where he used true and exaggerated situations to chronicle his journey into adulthood. Readers are fully aware who Daedalus really is - the name itself conjures images from Ovid of the Greek architect who built such an impressive work of art with his labyrinth that it trapped him, a clear allusion to young Joyce himself writing his first novel. Dostoevsky used his Siberian prison years in all his later work, but in Notes From the Underground he gives us a thinly veiled autobiography crossed with a savage political treatise. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography may be the most read autobiography in America, but historians have told us of the many exaggerations and outright falsehoods in that book. That doesn't diminish its power. So I have been increasingly surprised of the outrage and umbrage over the recent rash of scandals regarding memoirs in the literary world.

Love and Consequences is the supposedly a true story of a mixed race young woman coming up in south central LA and becoming involved in her black foster brothers' descent into gangland drug running and violence. I haven't read it, but I remember the positive reviews it received upon release. But Margaret B Jones is simply a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who evidently is just a white girl from the Valley with a Desdemona complex. The book was marketed as a true story, but Seltzer own sister ratted her out to her publishers. So evidently Seltzer is no angel. However, that is beside the point. Who cares if is true or not? If you enjoyed reading it, then just give the girl some dap for being savvy enough to get her book deal in the dog-eat-dog publishing world. James Frey got a rash of shit and a public smackdown from Oprah Winfrey for his "embellishments" in the addiction and recovery memoir A Million Little Pieces. The book cracked Oprah's book club, and millions of readers claimed the book "helped the through tough times" and "inspired them," yet they felt betrayed when it was revealed that parts of the book were untrue. These people are morons - no fucking morons. The story was true enough to help you, to inspire you, then that's all that matters. I am sure Frey is laughing all the way to the bank and devise a suitable pseudonym for his next book.

Joyce and Dostoevsky had a major advantage over modern writers - there wasn't a lot of competition for entertainment in those days, and people had more patience. The kind of patience it takes to really invest in a powerful, demanding novel or memoir - and that patience is usually rewarded with a satisfaction and fulfillment that will never be found in a movie, or in the latest Stephen King or James Patterson airport paperback on the bestseller lists. Today, people read 3 or 4 books a year if they're lucky, and Oprah tends to pick 'em. To write a bestseller, especially with your first novel, well it is damn near impossible. I admire Frey and Seltzer. Sure, they may have bent the rules to get their stories out there, but those stories evidently spoke to people - and when it comes to literature, that is really all that matters.