Two more cases of fictional memoirs… This time, a bestselling Holocaust memoir turned out to be fake. As The New York Times writes, “The author was never trapped in the Warsaw ghetto. Neither was she adopted by wolves who protected her from the Nazis, nor did she trek 1,900 miles across Europe in search of her deported parents or kill a German soldier in self-defense. She wasn’t even Jewish.” Particularly humorous is the author’s excuse that “Ever since I can remember, I felt Jewish.”
That instance was followed by today’s news that an acclaimed memoir of gang life is also untrue. The New York Times writes that the author “is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.”
Galley Cat points out that the fake gang memoir is published by Riverhead, the same company that put out James Frey’s fake addiction memoir.
So here’s what you should do if you intend to get a memoir published:
- Start with your basic story. You’re an insurance agent. You’re rehabbing your grandfather’s cabin. You’re trying to find a job. Take whatever you really want to write about but no editor or agent will bother to read and no customer will ever buy.
- Add in one-part drug addiction. The more horrific the better. Don’t just stop at a little weed. Go all the way for teeth-falling-out meth issues. Or, shooting heroin in between your toes.
- Mix in two-parts abuse. Sexual abuse is more effective, however physical abuse can be used as a substitute. Be sure to dwell on the gory parts but also impart a sense of triumph as you struggle but inevitably overcome the tortures.
- Pour in two cups of straight vodka. A little booze goes a long way in a memoir. Alcohol is a good bridge in between other issues in a memoir. So you beat the addiction in Step #2, but then you fall of the wagon a bit and land in a vat of gin.
- Top off the mixture with terminal illness. Politically charged illnesses work well (see J.T. Leroy). Although if you can work in some cruel irony, that’s effective as well. Instead of just being an insurance agent, say that you’re an insurance agent who was just discovered by a top modeling agency. However, as you’re booking your ticket to Milan, you suffer an attack from a flesh eating virus that turns your gorgeous face to mush.
- Be sure to use words such as “triumph,” “struggle,” “inspiration,” and “overcome.” Include tons of references to “giving voice” and “sharing my story.”
Voila! You’re now well on your way to a bestselling memoir. The trick is to hide your lies well enough so they don’t get immediately discovered. In spite of the public scorn, James Frey and his publisher made millions. But in the case of Margaret B. Jones (real name Margaret Seltzer) who penned the fake gang memoir, the book has been recalled and the tour cancelled. So be sure to cover your tracks.
And if you’re able to really sell the booze-and-meth addiction part, later on you’ll have a convenient excuse when you’re busted for stretching the truth: “Honestly, I gave myself so much brain damage from guzzling all those quarts of grain alcohol – as I detailed in Chapters 5 through 7 – that when I finally wrote the book I truly believed I once had a week-long orgy that involved the USC marching band, three circus elephants and Robert Plant.”
As far as the Holocaust memoir goes, i have not read it, but i think generally the responses have been extremely reactionary and cruel. I think we should consider that the story could’ve been an expression of what really happend to her, in reality she did experience very traumatic events as a child and her parents were really killed by the Nazi regime.
Also, JT LeRoy never used AIDS to market her books, that is a common misconception. Please try to find a reliable source for that information. You won’t because, It does not exist. and also, the JT LeRoy books were always fictional novels, not memoirs.
I haven’t read the Holocaust memoir either and don’t know much about the author. One article published in Australia says “Rather than being the daughter of Jewish parents, Misha was in fact brought up a strict Catholic.
At the time she claimed to be skinning rabbits in the snow and stealing food from farmhouses on her way to Poland, she was a four year old living with her grandparents in a Brussels flat. The only truth in her story seems to have been the disappearance of her parents, deported for joining the Belgian resistance movement.”
In the same piece, it states the author wanted to distance herself from her family members who considered her to be “the daughter of a traitor.”
You’re exactly right, Casey. JT Leroy’s work was ALWAYS presented as fiction. By including it here in the parenthetical reference, I didn’t mean to give the impression that it was a memoir.
In regards to the illness issue, it gets murky. Leroy’s former literary agent told the New York Times, “To present yourself as a person who is dying of AIDS in a culture which has lost so many writers and voices of great meaning, to take advantage of that sympathy and empathy, is the most unfortunate part of all of this. A lot of people believed they were supporting not only a good and innovative and adventurous voice, but that we were supporting a person.”
Although, in fairness, it was reported in a recent LA Weekly piece that “Laura insists she never went on record saying JT had AIDS.”
But she is quoted in the Paris Review as saying “I had learned on the street from outreach workers that if you get into a dangerous sexual situation, you just tell the man you have AIDS—that was the last-resort survival strategy. So I finally put the brakes on and said I had AIDS and sores all over my body” in response to an uncomfortable interaction with a writer.
In that same Paris Review piece she says, “Originally I felt that he [Leroy] might die of AIDS, but that’s not in any of the books. I didn’t deny the rumors, but I never made any statement intended to further JT’s popularity by claiming he had AIDS.”