Arts
Fake Memoirs
Celebrity gossip site, Jossip‘s A Brief History of Modern Lying Authors , details a number of literary scams that have proved to be an embarrassment to their authors, publishers (and most distressingly,) Oprah. They include:
Gang memoir – Love and Consequences, by Margaret B. Jones, a mixed-race kid who grew up in South Central, LA, enduring gang initiations and drug abuse. She turned out to be Margaret Seltzer, a white valley girl.
Addiction memoir – A Million Little Pieces, in which James Frey embellished a stay in prison. He was forced to apologize to Oprah. In person. On TV.
Holocaust love memoir – The Angel at the Fence, in which, Herman Rosenblat tells how he fell in love with a girl who threw apples over the fence of the concentration camp where he was imprisoned. They later met on a blind date in NYC and lived happily ever after. Until it was revealed to be a lie. There are calls for him to apologise. To Oprah. On TV.
Messed up childhood memoir – The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, by JT Leroy who was crossed-dressed and pimped out by his mother while he was a teenager. He turned out to be Laura Alpert., a 40-yr-old woman.
Spookily, all the titles seem, with hindsight, to suggest what’s to come…
Discussion
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What a great name! “TV Mole”
The information here makes for entertaining reading, and I bet it will save lots aggravating hours lost on trial and error.