Love and Consequences

So what do we make of the news today regarding one Margaret Seltzer, aka Margaret Jones, who penned Love and Consequences, the true story of the author's gang-riddled youth. Widely praised, the author allowed herself to be photographed for the New York Times, to be trotted out as a literary star, to be interviewed about her troubled youth, only to be outted, a few days later, by a sister who revealed that the entire life story was a fabrication—a tale told by a privileged woman who had not lived even a semblance of the life she put on the page.

Audacity? Naivety? Never heard of Nasdij or James Frey, never paid attention to the psychic fall-out experienced by authors whose farces unravel over time? Thought she could get away with it? Didn't mind taking the risk? Really did believe, as she is quoted in today's New York Times as saying, that the book represented her "opportunity to put a voice to people who people don't listen to"?

Reading the early reviews last week, I thought to myself: Well, oh dear. Here comes another. Wondered how long it would take for the author to be in some way found out. Some stories simply don't ring true, no matter how well they've been crafted, and while I'd have certainly never guessed at the depth of this deception, I do wonder why more questions were not asked before the author was sent out to dazzle the world with her distortions.

Memoir writing is a tricky business. My story isn't your story, even if you grew up in my house, even if you are my son, even if you chose to marry me, even if you raised me. Still, there are facts, hard, abrasive truths, documents, photographs from which one cannot escape. Memoir riddles readers with interpretations, true. But memoir is not borrowing another's story as one's own. It is not abusing the personal "I" for the sake of an imagined global good.