USATODAY.com - When fiction masquerades as truth
This is an issue that is beyond conservative and liberal. If you publish a memoir it should be substantially correct. If you change names and details you explain why. In no case do you consistently remake yourself as a fictional character incredibly more evil and more victimized and more depraved than you are to make a more dramatic story. There is an old adage that Americans love a redemption story and the more evil and unlikely to survive the better the uplifting and transformative redemption. James Frey exploited that.
I had posted other reactions to a Million Little Lies last week on another of my blogs but this is starting to illuminate a larger issue. To what extent is the truth an important virtue in religion and politics? To what extant is a disregard for the truth an important part of the strategy of what I call the conservative elite? I know many on the right who feel it is part of the strategy of what they call the liberal elite. The Frey case helps them.
I think lies, large and small, are a big part of the strategy of the conservative leaders in both politics and religion. I find many conservatives feel that serving a "larger truth" is more important. What I call true conservatives do not feel that they need to compromise.
The fact that this fictional memoir is championed by Oprah and the East Coast book publishing industry would lead some to be believe that a disregard for the truth is a liberal failing. I think it is a human failing of both sides.
I have ranted against the hypocrisy and lies from the neo-cons and the religious right. Can I do less than also criticize Oprah and some in the book industry?
Oprah and the publisher should relabel the book as fiction based on a true story.
Read the investigation by the Smoking Gun looking for a mugshot that started this.
This Google will allow you to keep up with the scandal and see what others have to say.
Added - in this case The New York Times gets it.
Richard Cohen has an accurate account of Oprah's Grand Delusion.
What she needs is a session with Dr. Phil... Here is where Dr. Phil steps in. He might tell his friend and mentor that there is no redemption without honesty. Treatment, as one expert told me, begins with "owning your life" and not embellishing it for the sake of others or yourself. It was one thing when Frey's tale was believed to be 100 percent true. Now that the lie has been exposed, the message can no longer be about redemption but about concoction -- the lies that addicts tell others, the ones they tell themselves.
As for Doubleday, the liar's publisher, it uttered all sorts of nonsense about different rules for memoirs but had no real explanation of how an hour or so in jail could be recollected as three months. In this vast corporation, there seemed to be no one who knew the difference between fact and fiction, truth and a lie. (Fiction packaged as fact is a lie.) Doubleday did not seem even a tad embarrassed that it had been snookered, that it had lent its considerable name and reputation -- built on the hard work of many an honest writer -- to a sham. What's more, it did not acknowledge that it must have suspected for some time that Frey had cooked his book. Back in 2003, for instance, the Minneapolis Star Tribune had questioned the book's factualness. (Some of "A Million Little Pieces" takes place in Minneapolis.) In effect, the story was dismissed -- go away, silly newspaper, there's too much money at stake.
2 comments:
I assume everything is fiction. Even non-fiction is slightly fiction. Every story has some bias and exageration. I'll believe a memoir is totally non-fiction only when I write my own. And, even then I'll know that the stories are only as true as I decided to tell them. I'm certainly not going to take the author's and publisher's word that a memoir is totally true.
On an unrelated note, you should think about allowing non-blogger people to post.
I hadn't realized I had missed a setting and restricted comments to blogger members only.
I also don't expect memoirs to be the last word in veracity but in this case all the big events are wrong. Frey himself reportedly said he first presented it as a fictional work and his editor said it was so much better as a memoir.
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