21st Century Snake Oil

A couple different days this past week, the New York Times has run articles about the latest alleged memoir (this one about life in a gang) recently exposed to be a huge fabrication.

Here's what I don't understand: in the good old days, when you MADE UP a story, you submitted it to publishers as a work of FICTION. So why are the people making up these stories submitting them as memoirs? Plenty of novels have been written in the first person, with a sort of memoir-esque tone about them. Plenty of these novels have even been grounded in the author's own experience, though in their retelling the people and events have been altered or embellished (exhibit A: Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried).

So why on earth would you submit something that you know to be a work of fiction as a true personal memoir? Do publishers have different (read: lower) standards for memoirs than they do for novels? Or has our society become so obsessed with "reality" entertainment that we will no longer read fiction that reverberates with truth but will voyeuristically consume other peoples "true" tales? Or is this a capitalizing on your 15 minutes of fame run amok? That a good novel will maybe land you some interviews on bookish programs with a small audience, but a sensational memoir might put you face-to-face with Letterman?

I just don't get it. And I don't like it. I mean, using an unreliable narrator as a literary device is one thing, being steeped in post-modern philosophy and believing all truth is relative and contextual is quite another thing, but bold-faced lying is a whole different beast altogether. And it seems to me, to pass off as a memoir what you know is fiction is a bold-faced lie (made worse, in this case, by fabricating a charity online, as an attempt to cover the tracks of the original lie). It's a con, no different than the old-timey itinerant hucksters lying through their teeth as they try to sell you their "miraculous" medicine. And I just don't get how a con lives with themselves - or, as importantly, with others - when their whole lives are built around deception, around seeing how far and how long they can ride the lie, around how much money they can make before their house of cards comes tumbling down.

Instead of the poor, Jesus should have warned us about the unscrupulous who will always be with us. . .

Peace,
Catrina