Last week, I read a New York Times review of a memoir titled, Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival, the story of how a “part white, part Native American girl” survived as a foster child in a black home in gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles.
According to the review, Margaret B. Jones told “in colorful, streetwise argot” of how she got a gun for her 13th birthday, learned how to cook crack, and saw friends killed and sent to prison. Jones made it out of the ‘hood, attending the University of Oregon on a scholarship.
I smelled a rat.
I’m generally suspicious of memoirs anyway (thanks, James Frey), but this one was stretching it. Now, I don’t know much about “gang culture,” but the story just didn’t ring true. Based on the book review, Jones’s tale seemed like warmed-over TV drama. It sounded to me like Jones was a white girl just pretending, living out some weird fantasy and using the “right” gang slang. (Homies? Do people still use that word?)
It turns out my suspicions were warranted. Today it was revealed that Margaret B. Jones, also known as Margaret Seltzer, made up the whole thing. She’s a white woman who grew up in Sherman Oaks with her biological family and graduated from a private Episcopal day school. Seltzer’s sister saw a New York Times story about baby sis and told the publisher she was a liar. From TimesOnline:
In an interview with the New York Times when it revealed her true upbringing today, Ms Seltzer admitted that large parts of her memoir were invented.
Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Group USA, immediately announced that it was recalling all copies of the book and cancelled her scheduled tour, saying that it represented a “personal betrayal” as its staff had been completely taken in by Ms Seltzer’s story.
“It’s very upsetting to us because we spent so much time with this person, and we felt such sympathy for her, and she would talk about how she didn’t have any money or any heat, and we completely bought into that and thought we were doing something good by bringing her story to light,” Sarah McGrath, the Riverhead editor who worked with her for three years on her book, said.
“There’s as huge a personal betrayal here as a professional one.”
Explaining why she had chosen to tell tales, Ms Seltzer said that she had wanted to “put a voice” to people from poor neighbourhoods who never get listened to – even though she was not one of them.
We’ve all lied before. OK, big deal. But to tell a whopper like this? How did Seltzer expect to get away with it? Does the publishing house have fact checkers? Weird woman.
The moral of the story is: if you suspect an author’s story is a lie, blog about your suspicions before the person is exposed. Your prescience will add to your credibility, and you’ll get mad links for calling foul early in the game.
(Oh, and the other moral is don’t tell whoppers!)
More news at Google news.
