(Skip to the end of this rant of a post for two happy thoughts — gotta keep a balance.)
Remember the furor over James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces a couple of years ago? Namely, that he fabricated most of his memoir? And Oprah blew a gasket?
Memoirist — I take that back — novelist Margaret Seltzer one-upped Frey big time when she wrote a tale that did not remotely resemble her nice-white-girl life. A few nuggets of truth burbled below the surface of Frey’s fabrication while Seltzer’s book was 100% hoax. Here’s a link to the International Herald Tribune write-up.
In Love and Consequences, Seltzer depicted herself as a half-Native American foster child in South-Central Los Angeles, which led to a gang-banger life of violence and drugs. In reality, Seltzer comes from stable, well-educated, upper-middle-class family.
Apparently, she knows people from that area of Los Angeles, and she wanted to tell their stories. What a wondrous reason to fabricate “proof” of her fake identity! She snowed both her agent and publisher over a number of years. Congratulations to her for excellence in long-term subterfuge — a true talent, that.
Here’s the pity: The South-Central stories do deserve to be told, and Seltzer blew a marvelous opportunity. If she were truly altruistic she would have written the stories as theirs, not hers. I don’t buy her good intentions as quoted in the International Herald Tribune article. Anyone can generate positive spin after the fact. Besides, she’s already proven herself an expert liar.
We live in a 15-minutes-of-fame, reality-impaired era. I can’t help but wonder if this is the heart of it for Seltzer and never mind that in the process she diminished the true plight of many South-Central teenagers.
I don’t know why I’m surprised by a fake memoir. The blur between reality and fiction on all media fronts gets ever blurrier.
I salute the following wonderfully legitimate memoirs:
Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
Shutterbabe by Deborah Copaken Kogan
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr
Last but not least, here are my happy bits:
1. The last early-warning sign of spring and the best of all: The yearly return of a mallard pair to the stream next to my building!
2. I passed the 300-page mark of my first draft!