Fake memoirs

Fake memoirs form a category of literary forgery in which a wholly or partially fabricated autobiography, memoir or journal of an individual is presented as fact. Often, the purported author of the work also is fabricated. In recent years, there have been a number of such memoirs published by major publishers, some of which were well received critically and even became best sellers, but which subsequently were shown to be partly or completely fabricated. A number of recent fake memoirs fall into the category of "misery lit," where the author claims to have overcome illness, abuse, drug or alcohol addiction or other serious trauma. Several similarly are fabricated stories about the Holocaust, in at least one case written by an actual Holocaust survivor.

As a result of the recent series of best seller memoirs that have turned out to be fabricated, there have been calls for stronger vetting of new authors and fact checking of their books.[1]

Contents

Public reception

A number of fake memoirs in recent years have been published by renowned publishing houses and received critical acclaim before being exposed as partial or complete fabrications. Five of the memoirs, Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood (Binjamin Wilkomirski),The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams (Nasdijj),[2] Love and Consequences (Margaret Seltzer),[3]The greatest, my own story (Muhammad Ali and Richard Durham)[4] and Go Ask Alice (Anonymous)[5] were praised by the New York Times before being exposed as fabrications. Three of the memoirs, Love and Consequences (Margaret Seltzer), Angel at the Fence (Herman Rosenblat) and Odd Man Out (Matt McCarthy) were published, or in the case of Angel at the Fence, scheduled to be published, by Penguin Group USA. Two of the memoirs, A Million Little Pieces (James Frey) and The greatest, my own story (Muhammad Ali and Richard Durham) were published by Random House. Two of the authors, James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) and Herman Rosenblat (prior to writing his Angel at the Fence), as well as someone posing as Anthony Godby Johnson (A Rock and a Hard Place), appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, only to have their fabrications exposed, their book deals cancelled, and/or be confronted by Oprah on her show.[6] The dust-up over falsified memoirs even inspired the title of Andrea Troy's satiric novel, "Daddy-An Absolutely Authentic Fake Memoir".

List of fake memoirs and journals

See also

References

  1. ^ "Lies and Consequences: Tracking the Fallout of (Another) Literary Fraud", New York Times, 2008-03-05, p. B1. See also "A Family Tree of Literary Fakers," New York Times, 2008-03-08, p. A17.
  2. ^ a b http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-9780345453891-1
  3. ^ a b http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Love-and-Consequences/Margaret-B-Jones/e/9781594489778
  4. ^ a b http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=34713
  5. ^ a b http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-0689832494-0
  6. ^ a b Carr, David (2006-01-30). "How Oprahness Trumped Truthiness". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/30/business/media/30carr.html?ex=1296277200&en=1c0e8843da5b43d6&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss. Retrieved 2007-10-05. 
  7. ^ Hill, Benjamin; Schwarz, Alan (2009-03-03). "Errors Cast Doubt on a Baseball Memoir". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/sports/baseball/03book.html. Retrieved 2010-05-02. 
  8. ^ "Publication of disputed Holocaust memoir canceled". Associated Press. 2008-12-27. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28391083/. Retrieved 2008-12-28. 
  9. ^ New York Times article
  10. ^ "CNN.com". CNN. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0705/01/lkl.01.html. Retrieved 2010-05-02. 
  11. ^ Dowd, Maureen (2006-01-08). "Oprah's Bunk Club". The New York Times. http://homepage.mac.com/imfalse/chapel_annex/oprahs_bunk_club.html. Retrieved 2007-10-05. 
  12. ^ Poniewozik, James (2006-01-26). "Oprah Clarifies Her Position: Truth, Good. Embarrassing Oprah, Very Bad". Time. http://time-blog.com/tuned_in/2006/01/oprah_clarifies_her_position_t.html. Retrieved 2007-10-05. 
  13. ^ Holocaust Book Hoax See also [1]
  14. ^ Renata Salecl, Why One Would Pretend to be a Victim of the Holocaust: The Wilkomirski Memoir.
  15. ^ Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, Harcourt Inc., 2008, p. 82
  16. ^ Peskin, Harvey (1999-04-19). "Holocaust Denial: A Sequel", The Nation
  17. ^ Excerpt Four: Revealing a Literary Hoax: The Strange Case of Anthony Godby Johnson
  18. ^ Review by Michael Kisor
  19. ^ "BOOK NEWS Other literary hoaxes", Los Angeles Times, 2008-03-09
  20. ^ Rorvik, David Michael (1978). In his Image: The Cloning of a Man. Philadelphia and New York City: J. B. Lippincott. ISBN 978-0397012558.  The author (Rorvik) intentionally left the word "his" uncapitalized in the title of this book. See Talk:David Rorvik
  21. ^ The Cloning of a Man
  22. ^ The Education of Little Tree and Forrest Carter
  23. ^ http://www.shutitdown.net/text/askalice.html
  24. ^ Eugene L. Rasor, English/British Naval History to 1815: A Guide to the Literature (2004) p. 226. See also The Diary Research Website.
  25. ^ Colby, Anne (2008-03-14). "Meet the grandmother of memoir fabricators". Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/14/entertainment/et-cradle14. Retrieved 2008-12-31. 
  26. ^ (1 September 1906). Saturday Review of Books, p. BR537.
  27. ^ Howes, US-IANA, S654
  28. ^ Richard R. Flores, Remembering the Alamo : Memory, Modernity, and the Master Symbol, Univ. of Texas (2002), p. 139.
  29. ^ New York Herald, 1836-08-12, p.2, col. 1 ; The Colophon, pt. 17, 1934.
  30. ^ http://www.polishnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=852%3Athe-greatest-escape-war-hero-who-walked-4000-miles-from-siberian-death-camp&catid=93%3Ahistoriapolish-history&Itemid=329
  31. ^ Daily News (New York). http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/entertainment/1996/11/03/1996-11-03_he_must_have_been_a_pretenda.html. 
  32. ^ J. Michael Houlahan, “Fiction as Fact: False Memories of WWII in the Philippines”, Asia-Pacific Social Science Review (De La Salle University, Manila) 10:2 (2010), pp. 83–86.
  33. ^ Sascha Weinzheimer Jansen, Philippine Scouts Heritage Website, http://www.philippine-scouts.org/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1271251020