Truth and Lies
Long post today. Sorry.
My two sisters and I had totally different upbringings. Same family. But . . . I was oldest, and by the time I left home, pretty much for good, my youngest sister was only ten. My middle sister left a couple of years later, which meant for high school, my youngest sister was an "only." When MY life started out, my parents and I lived in an apartment building in Yonkers, NY, on the same block as my great-grandmother and great-grandfather, great-aunt, and a couple of cousins. We all left for safer neighborhood and better schools, or, in my great-grandparents' case, through death. By the time my youngest sister was in high school, we lived in a 5,000 square-foot French colonial, with a Jag and two or three Lincolns parked in the driveway. All I remember of my father's old Buick from when I was little . . . was that it smelled. You get the idea.
When I tell the "truth" about my upbringing, it is MY truth. And when my sisters tell about theirs . . . it is their own. My father changed from when I was born to when my youngest sister left the nest. He mellowed out, he probably wasn't as stressed about making a living--we got a whole new set of stresses, like the real estate market plummeting, not did he and my mom have enough paycheck at the end of the month to put food on the table. Now, as a mother, I have dragged my kids to war protests and brought them with me to march on Washington. I have insisted we boycott a SLEW of products for political reasons: Burger King, General Mills, I could go on with a lengthy list. When their schools do Box Tops for Education, it's all I can do from going down and protesting by staging a sit-in in the principal's office (Box Tops is sponsored by General Mills). I have dragged them along to the 'hood to help a family in need. They have wrapped presents for 12-year-old teen mothers. I think the "truth" is I am raising them to be fully conscious of issues of social justice. They may just think, "Mom's a nut who won't let us eat cereal."
So I'm sure, if you are a reader/writer, you saw the two major hoax stories this week, that amount to a search for truth in memoir. The first link is to the Margaret Seltzer story, the author who made up a life of foster care amongst the gangs of South-Central, LA. The second is about Misha Defonseca, who invented a life raised by wolves during the Holocaust.
Here are my thoughts--three major ones. Feel free to voice yours in the Comments section.
1) The obvious. Where the hell were the fact checkers? Move beyond that to something MORE obvious. Where was anyone with a brain? In the case of the first book, the Seltzer story, nothing about this woman's story rings true. I can tell you that when I, a white woman, took my kids into the worst of the worst mostly black and Hatian 'hood to do social work, I didn't see a face like mine. I didn't see a car like mine (which at the time was just a kind of crappy older van). When we got out of the car, 90% of the windows in this place shot out or broken, we were stared at. We were going to dinner at a friend's house. I never walked so fast in my life, even though at the time, I was pregnant. So maybe I would more adequately state I never waddled so fast. The fact is . . . people can spot an outsider in a second, and it would not be so easy for a white woman to move, fluidly, amongst gangs in that part of LA. I could also go on about the politics of fostering children from other races, and how the system looks at it closely, so even that rings false, but suffice it to say . . . it doesn't even SOUND real. The second story? Of the Holocaust hoax? A simple Google search would tell you how rare it is for a human being to be "raised by wolves." At times, I think Demon Baby came to me via a wolf pack, but since I can clearly recall giving birth . . .
2) Truth is subjective. Hence my introduction about my truth versus my sister's or my children's. We are EACH entitled to a truth.
3) BUT . . . bear with me. When a Buddhist eats a meal, he or she bows their head and thinks not just of the food on the plate, but the sun and rain that grew the food, the farmer or truck driver or whatever who brought it to market, all the hands involved in creating that meal. It is the idea that we are all interconnected. As such, it becomes a lot harder to be an a**hole. No one is lesser or greater. We're all connected. It becomes harder to eat cereal from companies that do the wrong thing. It becomes harder to be silent, in some ways, over injustice. So I get incensed over these hoaxes, particularly the gang one. And James Frey. Because when you so lose the thread of truth in the quest for a book deal, you are necessarily RIDING ON THE BACKS of real people whose stories those are. There ARE countless children in foster care, countless gang bangers, countless people without hope in extreme poverty and socially unjust situations. There are countless addicts for whom every day is a struggle WITHOUT the exaggeration for the sake of a sale of a book. And so, that, in my sincere opinion, is what karma is. You are, in my opinion, using the rapes and murders and drugs and gangs, using them in an intimate and real interconnected way, to sell your first novel. And Seltzer has taken all of the heaviness of that onto her soul. Just as James Frey has taken in the real death of the so-called "girlfriend" he had, whom he actually barely knew. All her family's grief and pain? He has taken that on. In the case of the Holocaust, I actually believe that writer is mentally ill; nonetheless . . . there is no greater tragedy to take on.
Were I to sincerely believe that any of these people walked a path in which they felt what they wrote was their "truth," I would be more forgiving, just as I am a lot more forgiving of Augusten Burroughs. I think he probably feels he owns that story pretty much as it is.
Finally, we all want deals. I could take certain aspects of my life, memories, triumphs, and tragedies, and mine my life for a sale (perhaps, if anyone thought it was interesting enough). But I would never put my life under a microscope like that, nor, more importantly, my families' lives. So I have chosen the route many of us take. I have "borrowed" bits and pieces of my own life and put them into fiction. But to try, as Selzter has done, to excuse her behavior and say the story must be told, when she knows full well that a first novel is a tougher sale than a white woman as the face of minority gangs in a memoir . . . is so many shades of wrong. All writers who toil at their craft should, I think, be outraged.
Thoughts??
My two sisters and I had totally different upbringings. Same family. But . . . I was oldest, and by the time I left home, pretty much for good, my youngest sister was only ten. My middle sister left a couple of years later, which meant for high school, my youngest sister was an "only." When MY life started out, my parents and I lived in an apartment building in Yonkers, NY, on the same block as my great-grandmother and great-grandfather, great-aunt, and a couple of cousins. We all left for safer neighborhood and better schools, or, in my great-grandparents' case, through death. By the time my youngest sister was in high school, we lived in a 5,000 square-foot French colonial, with a Jag and two or three Lincolns parked in the driveway. All I remember of my father's old Buick from when I was little . . . was that it smelled. You get the idea.
When I tell the "truth" about my upbringing, it is MY truth. And when my sisters tell about theirs . . . it is their own. My father changed from when I was born to when my youngest sister left the nest. He mellowed out, he probably wasn't as stressed about making a living--we got a whole new set of stresses, like the real estate market plummeting, not did he and my mom have enough paycheck at the end of the month to put food on the table. Now, as a mother, I have dragged my kids to war protests and brought them with me to march on Washington. I have insisted we boycott a SLEW of products for political reasons: Burger King, General Mills, I could go on with a lengthy list. When their schools do Box Tops for Education, it's all I can do from going down and protesting by staging a sit-in in the principal's office (Box Tops is sponsored by General Mills). I have dragged them along to the 'hood to help a family in need. They have wrapped presents for 12-year-old teen mothers. I think the "truth" is I am raising them to be fully conscious of issues of social justice. They may just think, "Mom's a nut who won't let us eat cereal."
So I'm sure, if you are a reader/writer, you saw the two major hoax stories this week, that amount to a search for truth in memoir. The first link is to the Margaret Seltzer story, the author who made up a life of foster care amongst the gangs of South-Central, LA. The second is about Misha Defonseca, who invented a life raised by wolves during the Holocaust.
Here are my thoughts--three major ones. Feel free to voice yours in the Comments section.
1) The obvious. Where the hell were the fact checkers? Move beyond that to something MORE obvious. Where was anyone with a brain? In the case of the first book, the Seltzer story, nothing about this woman's story rings true. I can tell you that when I, a white woman, took my kids into the worst of the worst mostly black and Hatian 'hood to do social work, I didn't see a face like mine. I didn't see a car like mine (which at the time was just a kind of crappy older van). When we got out of the car, 90% of the windows in this place shot out or broken, we were stared at. We were going to dinner at a friend's house. I never walked so fast in my life, even though at the time, I was pregnant. So maybe I would more adequately state I never waddled so fast. The fact is . . . people can spot an outsider in a second, and it would not be so easy for a white woman to move, fluidly, amongst gangs in that part of LA. I could also go on about the politics of fostering children from other races, and how the system looks at it closely, so even that rings false, but suffice it to say . . . it doesn't even SOUND real. The second story? Of the Holocaust hoax? A simple Google search would tell you how rare it is for a human being to be "raised by wolves." At times, I think Demon Baby came to me via a wolf pack, but since I can clearly recall giving birth . . .
2) Truth is subjective. Hence my introduction about my truth versus my sister's or my children's. We are EACH entitled to a truth.
3) BUT . . . bear with me. When a Buddhist eats a meal, he or she bows their head and thinks not just of the food on the plate, but the sun and rain that grew the food, the farmer or truck driver or whatever who brought it to market, all the hands involved in creating that meal. It is the idea that we are all interconnected. As such, it becomes a lot harder to be an a**hole. No one is lesser or greater. We're all connected. It becomes harder to eat cereal from companies that do the wrong thing. It becomes harder to be silent, in some ways, over injustice. So I get incensed over these hoaxes, particularly the gang one. And James Frey. Because when you so lose the thread of truth in the quest for a book deal, you are necessarily RIDING ON THE BACKS of real people whose stories those are. There ARE countless children in foster care, countless gang bangers, countless people without hope in extreme poverty and socially unjust situations. There are countless addicts for whom every day is a struggle WITHOUT the exaggeration for the sake of a sale of a book. And so, that, in my sincere opinion, is what karma is. You are, in my opinion, using the rapes and murders and drugs and gangs, using them in an intimate and real interconnected way, to sell your first novel. And Seltzer has taken all of the heaviness of that onto her soul. Just as James Frey has taken in the real death of the so-called "girlfriend" he had, whom he actually barely knew. All her family's grief and pain? He has taken that on. In the case of the Holocaust, I actually believe that writer is mentally ill; nonetheless . . . there is no greater tragedy to take on.
Were I to sincerely believe that any of these people walked a path in which they felt what they wrote was their "truth," I would be more forgiving, just as I am a lot more forgiving of Augusten Burroughs. I think he probably feels he owns that story pretty much as it is.
Finally, we all want deals. I could take certain aspects of my life, memories, triumphs, and tragedies, and mine my life for a sale (perhaps, if anyone thought it was interesting enough). But I would never put my life under a microscope like that, nor, more importantly, my families' lives. So I have chosen the route many of us take. I have "borrowed" bits and pieces of my own life and put them into fiction. But to try, as Selzter has done, to excuse her behavior and say the story must be told, when she knows full well that a first novel is a tougher sale than a white woman as the face of minority gangs in a memoir . . . is so many shades of wrong. All writers who toil at their craft should, I think, be outraged.
Thoughts??
Labels: literary hoaxes, memoir, truth
posted by Erica Orloff at 6:14 AM
36 comments
