In the last week, there's been a rash of popular authors being exposed as not what they seemed to be. First, it came out that JT Leroy, a Bay Area literary celebrity, does not actually exist. Leroy' most popular work is probably his collection of short stories, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, but he had published two other books and also written for The New York Times. Leroy's fame was based on his experiences as a teen prostitute, drug addiction, recovery, and the later revelation that he had been infected with HIV. It turns out that the person who had appeared as Leroy in public is actually a woman, and no one is really sure who wrote the books. Leroy's agent, publisher, and many celebrity friends were all unaware of the hoax.
I also read today James Frey admitted that his memoir A Million Little Pieces, which was an Oprah Book Club book and thus a best seller, is not entirely true. Apparently his twenties were not quite as edgy and criminally inclined as he wanted his readers to believe.
Some would argue that if something is being packaged a a memoir, it should be true. I say that in the media world all bets are off. If my subscription to Us Weekly has taught me anything, it is that nothing about celebrities is real. It's all constructed to make them sell. That's why publicists, stylists, and image consultants get paid. Authors are just another type of celebrity.
The shocker in these two scenarios is that the publishers and agents were unaware of the hustle, but I'd argue that if they had known they wouldn't have done anything differently. It's common practice for a publisher to advise an author to take up a pen name if they think their real name is unmarketable. It's not unusual for the pen name to imply a gender that the author doesn't subscribe to. Memoir is all based on someone's memory, right? Memory is fragile and subject to individual perspective. The line between those memories that are true and right and those that aren't is a very blurry one.
These people got their art out there, which is becoming increasingly hard to do in a publishing environment that is necessarily focused on the bottom line. They worked the system. I don't have a problem with that. Like the Internet, you shouldn't believe everything you read in books, anyway.
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4 comments:
Isn't there something that essentually says: There's the actual event, there's what you remeber of the event, there's what others remember of the event, and there's what one remembers of what another say about the event.
That's strangely similar to what I read on a bathroom wall once:
You're not who you think you are.
You're not who others think you are.
You are who you think others think you are.
Celebrities lie. They're just like us!
I have to say, this is a great post.
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