Remember James Frey’s Million Little Pieces? Sales blew up after Oprah selected it for her book club, but it all came crashing down when his fabrications came out.
Here’s the article by The Smoking Gun that was the beginning of the end of Frey’s book.
More recently, Raynor Winn’s The Salt Path faced scrutiny for major omissions and exaggerations. Here is Winn’s response to The Observer’s allegations.
The lesson is simple—memoir means truth as we know it. Memory isn’t perfect, but inventing or hiding facts will ultimately backfire.
Publishers expect honesty in memoir, and readers do too. As long as we write with integrity, we remain on solid ground.
There are still two open spots for writers on the Writing the Waves cruise. Check out the cruise page for all the details.
But as long as you write the truth, always remember, the only way to do this wrong is to not do it at all!
As for me… I am a Sagittarius. I can’t lie, even if I had to. Why? For what? In the life I have survived/lived, you/I couldn’t make up a story this outlandish. I am finally free to write this story because most of them have died. Oh, wait… what if they rise from the dead and come back to get me from their graves? Well, in that case, it’s a good thing I write only truths. They may say it didn’t happen like that, and that is alright, but I am telling my story the way I remember it and… Read more »
My sister and wife are my main fact checkers. Sometimes I look things up on the internet.I have made a lot of mistakes. I have to say the whole idea of getting the facts straight scares me. I have gotten names and dates wrong more than once. In the back of my mind, there is always the niggling little voice that asks if “it really happened that way.” I’ve read about false memories, where people recall things that never happened, which sometimes makes me paranoid. For example, I recently wrote a story in which I lost pieces from a couple… Read more »
I don’t feel I have to fudge about anything in my life. There have been enough bloopers and excitement without it to entertain truthfully, with a little humor on the side.
Good episode! Thank you for this, Patricia. My main feeling, on reading about these hoaxes, is to wonder what made the authors think they could get away with it. In this internet age, there is no privacy, and fact checking is relatively easy, as Winn and Frey have discovered. This doesn’t intimidate me or keep me from writing memoir. There is nothing shocking about my memories, nor am I expecting whatever I write to be a bestseller or even to be published. It does remind me to “let the buyer beware” and keep in mind the likelihood that any particularly… Read more »
Integrity seems to carry less value than money sometimes. Notoriety matters more. While I listened, I wondered how much money they made from their subterfuge. Did they have to pay any of it back? Probably not.
Good questions!
Well said, Terry.