I think it’s in part because we’re afraid to criticize people who come from what might be considered a tough background. It’s like if someone criticizes Israel and is labeled an anti-semitic.

This being said, I live in Maine, where there are a lot of Native Americans. They do not take kindly to incidences like this.

“A Family Tree of Literary Fakers.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/books/08fakes.html?p agewanted=print

Peace.

You shouldn’t feel ashamed. The longing for non-fiction is, from what I can tell, due to a numbing of the mind to true pain and suffering. That we want to believe a story is true is to me evidence to the fact that we have seen too much violence. I will never understand this culture, which takes pleasure and glee from obssessing over the two million dollar difference between the cost of two air-headed heiress’s cocktail dresses, and so much horrified but detailed coverage of the latest starlet-with-a-breakdown syndrome, and so much rapturous idealization of those who have survived in the worst conditions.
I do not know what it is like to live in South Central. The closest I have come to living in the middle of a tough neighborhood was the well-protected dorms of Gallaudet University. There are many kinds of strength in the world. The strength against the temptation to misuse your skills is one that is too often admired, and too little recognized.
These are the kind of acts that make people wish for the “good old days”. The only difference between then and now, is that now it is easier to sniff out a liar.

Not having read the book, and never having met Ms. Selzer, I can’t judge weather or not she can “imagine” what it is like to be a black, or latino, or red-neck.  A person’s ability to “imagine” what it is like to be someone else, has little to do with “background” and much more to do with empathy, understanding, and life/world experience (much of this exeprience can be of a observational/vicarious nature).

I agree that there is a difference between fiction and auto-biography.  Fiction is a story, auto-biography is lies (or simply propaganda, or apologetics).  Fiction can show us truths.  Autobiography only shows us wishfull thinking.

In anycase, non-fiction is an impossible.  Indeed non-fiction is the literary equivalent of reality TV fun to watch but entirely without substance or nutrition.  Non-fiction is to literature what Mcdonalds is to fine dinning.

I think it is best to assume everything is fiction, cause it is.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was at least as instrumental in canonizing specific stereotypes about blacks as it was in furthering the abolitionist movement.  I think it is important to critically examine how a text functions, be it fiction or not.

Toni Morrison has written, “the subject of the dream is the dreamer.” Ms.Seltzer’s fraudulent memoir could be read as an account of how the ghettos of South Central present themselves in the imagination of a white woman from Sherman Oaks.  I’d love to read a review article on that.

I agree with you, while not even having read the book. In these times of a total fictional war for political and monetary gain(without consequences) I find it pretty hypocritical of the publishing world for trying to raise the issue of “truth” versus fiction.
Again and again, people can be a “witness” to something and there turns out to as many “versions” of the event as there were people involved.
“Realty versus truth?” Maybe it is more a version of getting bad reviews hurting the bottom line for the publishers? Somebody sold them a story and because it had a hook, line and sinker which could make a profit in the marketplace, they bought it!
Please take off the rose colored glasses and look at what our society has that is similar. Modern medicine? Pharmacuticals? Politics? Corporations? Advertising? The Judicial system? Government propaganda? The Media itself? Publishers? Redefining the term “torture” like it is some testimony of, could you define the term of “is”? Secret prisons? Poisoned, tainted elections?
And, we recommend punishing a writer for presenting a work of fiction as that of “truth” like George W. would be reading it? Heads up - he doesn’t read!
Let the marketplace respond and leave the hypocrisy behind. If the publishers wish to make an example of someone, go where it will really mean something to people who are genuinely suffuring. Less hot air, more action!

Curiously I rmember the review because Murray compared Setzer’s book with Claude Brown’s MANCHILD IN THE PROMISED LAND, a book that Reed worried would be read like a pimp show--I guess here have a case of the same: sensationalism reconfirming stereotypes consumed by book reviewers.
So this is simply picking up an older genre ...

Maybe American public opinion hasn’t made much progress in the meantime. When it comes to hoaxes.

Best, Sämi in Switzerland

When I read Carlos Casteneda’s Journey To Ixtlan as a teenager, I had no idea it was a work of fiction. When I later learned the truth about the apocryphal Don Juan, my reaction was, “well I guess Casteneda is not a great journalist after all. Instead he’s a wickedly brilliant writer.” A writer with an ebullient, supercharged imagination. While I might have been disappointed that Don Juan was not real, I gained much more respect for Casteneda as an artist.

Then there’s the case of Orson Welles. His War Of The Worlds had folks across the country boarding up their houses and heading for the hills in panic. What did that get him? Perhaps the best first picture studio deal in the history of filmmaking.

So I just don’t get all the sturm und drang from the literary world about this. Reality has always been an overrated commodity in storytelling. I’m interested in what the story brings to me, what it’s metaphors tell me, and if it can it transform the noise of life into music.

Beyond an initial shrug of incredulity, I simply couldn’t care less if it is “true” or not. Besides, studies in cognitive biases show that once the initial experience is filtered through our complex brains, it loses any relationship to our concept of truth in the strictest sense.

In the end, this is a story about the state of the publishing world, and it’s rush to exact revenge from the artists who exhibit the balls to skirt it’s piddling rules. I’ll raise a glass to Margaret Seltzer tonight. And hope she gets a great first picture deal.

Anyone who believe anything promoted as “auto-biography” (or memoir)...has any truth from the get go, deserves to be fooled.

If as I believe, that objectivity is impossible, especially as pertaints to ones self, the assumption should be that anything even remotely verging on “memoir” is inherently fiction.

Not that there is anything wrong with fiction, I like it better than “non” fiction.  My life is “real” enough for me, I don’t need the “reality” of someone else’s life to validate my existance.

Everyone should remember that Gulivers Travels, Robinson Crusoe, etc were all sold as “reality” in their day.  The fact that they are fictions does not diminish the artistry and creativity of the story.

We as individuals are more likely to gain insight into our lives from fiction than auto-biography or memoir.  The latter can only teach us about others, it says nothing about me, or you.

Trust but verify!

Who would have thought that even Ronald Reagan might have had some insights!

Two major literary frauds uncovered in two weeks. PLEASE don’t say “make a fool out of me” (again). Make that relatively modest adjustment of approaching books and films with the same moderate degree of skepticism that you would with someone eager to refinance your house, or sell you a car.  It seems to be painfully necessary, since the publishing industry is clearly not only not doing the necessary background checks, but is almost certainly complicit in these frauds.

I’m certainly not an expert on South Central, or any other ghetto, but, sorry, how could a sentence like: “With the money from my first drug sale, I bought my cemetery plot” not be, of itself, a “smoking gun” that this is fraud?

Atonement?  Find the book that already has been written by someone living in South Central, and promote that. Uncover the next fraud now.... there ARE numerous others out there.  In short, be a CRITIC, and er… ah.... do not accept things at face value, but dig for the Truth as the website is often good at doing.