fashionista_35

Okay, thing, the first? Lady in Target parking lot this morning? The one on San Jose Blvd? Yeah, you—the parking lot? Is not the freakin' Daytona Speedway. And your 4Runner? Cannot corner on rails or brake on a dime. So when I stopped in the parking lot, rather than swing into the open parking space to my left? It was because I had absolutely NO faith you were going to come to anything approaching a stop or even slow down. Seeing as I rather like my car, I chose to stop. This was not, however, an invitation for your ass to take the space I was waiting for.

Okay, authors, listen up. Most of us, we're storytellers. Our stories, they take various forms, be they in the realm of fiction or non-fiction. If'n you're telling a story that's allegedly based on your own, true life experiences, otherwise known as a MEMOIR, for the love of all that's good and holy, make sure the bitch is actually, you know, TRUE.

James Frey, I'm lookin' at you.

You too, Misha Defonseca. Or should we call you Monique De Wael?

Joining this particular Hall of Shame is Margaret B. Jones AKA Margaret Seltzer, who was caught out in the flagrant bullshit lie that she didn't grow up as a half-Native American/half-white girl who grew up in a foster home in South Central and ran drugs for the Bloods. In fact, she grew up as an affluent, all white girl who graduated from an exclusive private school.

Best part? She got busted by her sister. Guess who's off the Christmas card list this year?

There's so much of this that chaps my ass, I don't even know where to start, honestly. There's this part:

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.

Book tour. They were expecting THAT much out of it.

And she'd gotten sterling reviews, like this one, from the LA Times:

"Love and Consequences" drew admiring reviews from critics. Los Angeles Times book reviewer Susan Salter Reynolds cited "her loyalty to the language, the sense of community, the tight bonds she formed with her gang."

The cynic in me is wondering if she got such sterling reviews because of the idea that it was a memoir. Would the reviews have been as freely given, would she have become such a critical darling, if the book had been just another fiction title? It's that whole "essential truth" bullshit, that Oprah made allowable with all her praise for James Frey—that somehow, because there's allegedly truth in it, it speaks more deeply to the human condition and soul.

Yes, there are memoirs that do just that and that the only way their story can unfold is within the framework of the memoir. But that sort of snobbery does such a terrible disservice to the really wonderful novels out there that capture so much of the same emotion and pain and beauty and journeys that memoirs do. Do not dismiss the novel simply because your perception of it as nothing more than an entertaining fabrication precludes you from appreciating what might lie between the covers.

But ultimately, you know what really, really sets my hair on fire with this woman's story? Let me let her tell it in her own words:

In a sometimes tearful, often contrite telephone interview from her home on Monday, Ms. Seltzer, 33, who is known as Peggy, admitted that the personal story she told in the book was entirely fabricated. She insisted, though, that many of the details in the book were based on the experiences of close friends she had met over the years while working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles.

“For whatever reason, I was really torn and I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to,” Ms. Seltzer said. “I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us because nobody else is going to let us in to talk. Maybe it’s an ego thing — I don’t know. I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it.”

Yes, you could have told their story. But how DARE you misappropriate a cultural background that's already been abused so severely in the past for your own gain? How DARE you misappropriate these people's stories and experiences and pain as your own? How DARE you? Were you going to share your advance or the royalties? Were you going to take them on Oprah or any of the morning shows, where you undoubtedly would have been invited and paraded so the rest of us peons could see someone who'd really risen from the ashes? Were you going to take these "voices" with you on your tour that unfortunately has been cancelled? Seriously, Peggy, were you??

Somehow, I don't think so.

You know what, y'all? Write your stories—I got no beef with that. However, call it what it is, i.e. fiction and take your chances right along with the rest of us who are slogging along and trying to sell our very good books.

Worst part is? Someone will give her another book deal. They'll just use the notoriety from the failed memoir experiment to propel the next book's sales. Cult of personality, baby. Cult of personality.

ETA: Like my blood pressure needed to go any higher. I read the NYTimes profile which was what ultimately got her busted by her sister.

I could cheerfully take Bertha to this chick. Seriously. What a self-serving, condescending, stereotype perpetuating, arrogant bitch.

However, I find myself chuckling at a quote from the book, reprinted in the Times:

“There is no greater sin in war than ignorance. Never speak or act on anything you aren’t 100 percent sure of, or someone will expose your mistake and take you down for it.”

The irony, she is truly deliciously spicy.