Memoir was Fake; What is True Anymore?

A few days ago I wrote about a woman in Oregon who wrote a memoir and claimed that she had worked at Starbucks and, using stock options, ended up buying a home.

It turns out none of it is true. The book was made up, as was much of the author’s background. From the New York Times:

In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

The problem is that none of it is true.

Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.

Riverhead Books, the unit of Penguin Group USA that published “Love and Consequences,” is recalling all copies of the book and has canceled Ms. Seltzer’s book tour, which was scheduled to start on Monday in Eugene, Ore., where she currently lives.

How disappointing. Yet again, another “memoir” that is made up- because, apparently, not enough Americans live interesting real lives.

What can you say?

My question is: why aren’t these people writing novels then? Is it really that much easier to get a memoir published? Apparently.

Nevertheless, I’m still waiting for home prices to return to “affordable” levels so that someone really COULD work at the Starbucks for a few years, take their stock options, cash them in and buy a place to raise a family.

Stay tuned.