Why Lie? Palin’s Memoir Begs the Question

It’s supposedly the story of a humble, all-American girl who had no ambitions for a life in the political spotlight. Yet Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska who became the nation’s second female vice-presidential candidate, might not be what she would like the audiences of her forthcoming memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” to believe. In what is largely rumored to be Palin’s first stepping stone in the bid to secure the Republican nomination for a 2012 presidential ticket, a routine “fact-check” by the Associated Press has already uncovered a milieu of inaccuracies.

While Palin has most certainly been subject to intense scrutiny since she was tapped to be John McCain’s running mate, the critical look at her memoirs may actually be nothing personal against the woman described by some as “the most hated woman in America,” but rather a concentrated effort to avoid the touting of yet another fabricated memoir.

CREATIVE NONFICTION

It’s a problem that seems to be growing. Earlier this year, “Angel at the Fence,” a memoir detailing the love story between Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat and the girl who threw him apples over the fence during his internment at Buchenwald, was taken off the publisher’s schedule when the story was exposed as a hoax. The previous year, Margaret B. Jones’s “Love and Consequences” fooled critics with her intersectional memoir on race and gang life. It wasn’t all that long ago that another memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” captured the zenith of the memoir scandal as it took American readers by storm until it became obvious that the tale of drug abuse, love in rehab and an oral surgery with no pain killers was nothing more than a million little lies.

However, the problem is not a new one. The late, eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes was the subject of a biography written by Clifford Irving in 1972 that was not only fictional, but never authorized by the recluse. Alex Haley’s epic saga “Roots,” published in 1976, was billed as the brilliant retelling of the Haley family’s history through slavery until the present. Yet it was found to be both a work of plagiarism (of Harold Courlander’s “The African”) and fabrication; speculation over whether protagonist Kunta Kinte even lived continues today.

But the real question is why a genre of literature, built on the premise of a written account presented by the writers honest enough to tell it, has been plagued by the embarrassment of so many false memoirs. We’re no longer talking about Truman Capote’s invention of the nonfiction novel with “In Cold Blood” (which marks its 50th anniversary this week) but the complete unraveling of what the memoir once stood for: truth.

THE COST OF SELLING OUT

Part of it is simply the consuming nature of society. A well-received, commercially-appreciated book, particularly with an engaging author facing their own demons on the page, is never enough to satiate voracious readers. The authors themselves have become so commercialized as to be a deciding factor in the success of their books (is there really any doubt that the publication of Stephen King’s grocery list would be on the best seller list, provided it had a believable-enough monster chilling in produce?) and so too become figures of society’s curiosity. Inevitably, this means finding out their darkest secrets.

Indeed, this desire to know more is largely the reason for Frey’s fiction-crafting was exposed. TheSmokingGun website, which dedicates itself to exposing the most shocking, damning or amazing legal documents, mug shots and arrest records, immediately took an interest in Frey’s very public display as Oprah Winfrey’s latest book club darling. After Frey appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote “A Million Little Pieces,” TheSmokingGun attempted to find any record of his criminal history. Instead, they published a scathing report debunking the extent of the author’s drug use and crime spree.

Stephen J. Dubner, author of “Freakonomics,” suggests that a major reason behind the success of fake memoirs is that the reader is more likely to become engaged in the story if they believe what they’re reading is the truth.

That may have played a substantial role in Frey’s deception. The ensuing frenzy revealed that Frey had attempted to shop “A Million Little Pieces” around as a novel, before slapping it with the “memoir” label. Doubleday, one of the publishing houses that had initially rejected “A Million Little Pieces” when it was packaged as a novel, didn’t hesitate to pick it up for publication once it was presented as a memoir. The slip on Doubleday’s part suggests that true life is more marketable than that which is merely lifelike.

In other words, the very reasons for writing a fake memoir are often the factors in the authors’ downfall.

Jones, whose real name is Margaret Seltzer, attempted to pass herself off as a half-Native American gangbanger from a broken foster home. Seltzer, a white woman, had grown up with her biological parents in Sherman Oaks, an upscale suburb of the San Fernando Valley, and was exposed by her sister who saw a newspaper article about “Love and Consequences” with Seltzer’s picture.

While readers can only imagine what that next family reunion will look like (who wouldn’t want to be a fly on that wall?) what is known is that nonfiction writers are under considerable pressure to come up with material constantly pushing the envelope.

Jayson Blair, the disgraced New York Times reporter who made headlines for his wanton plagiarism and fabrications in 2003, felt the pressure of being the best. He told National Public Radio (NPR) on Nov. 6 that “…somewhere in that climbing, I lost sight of, sort of, my moral and ethical underpinnings.”

Ironically, Blair’s interview with NPR came just days after he was the keynote speaker at the Washington and Lee Journalism Ethics Institute summit. One can only wonder why it would seem like a good idea to extend an invitation to speak on ethics to the man who sat, single-handedly, at the heart of the scandal that turned the journalism worlds on its ear.

Still, his quotation expresses more responsibility than Blair took in his own memoir on the subject, “Burning Down My Master’s House,” published less than a year after the scandal that resulted in the ousting of two of the Times’ top editors and the loss of credibility for journalists everywhere. Though “Burning Down My Master’s House” acknowledges his actions of fabrication and plagiarism, Blair puts the blame on racism in the workplace and manages to point fingers at his own editors in the process.

THE BLAME GAME

The blame game is a common one after a nonfiction account turns out to be, well, fiction. Both Frey and Seltzer were initially defended by their publishers and editors, who insisted that they had fact-checked even the most phenomenal elements of their respective stories. As it became evident the memoirs were false, it was acknowledged that the fact-checking had non-existent.

Some agree with Blair that the editors and publishers bear the brunt of responsibility when a story, passed off as the truth, is exposed as fabrication. The fact that Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin, published both Selzter’s work and Frey’s second memoir that borrowed heavily from the first suggests there is a serious credibility to the argument that editors must take an accountability for fact-checking that’s been largely neglected, if not completely ignored.

Especially since a number of the inaccuracies in “Going Rogue” could have seemingly been cleared up with a Google search. Of course, Blair, Frey, Haley, and Seltzer were investigated with more depth than a review of campaign stories. They are not Sarah Palin, nor were they plagued with the months of political tailgating leading up to the publication of “Going Rogue.”

Despite this, Palin would do well to remember that with the fact-checking of “Going Rogue,” she’s being looked at as an author, not a politician. While politicians have been forgiven for lying, writers usually aren’t, largely because society has become cynical enough to expect them to deceive, inveigle and obfuscate. Writers, even if it isn’t the first or only hat they wear, are expected to deliver the truth. Particularly when the writing is packaged to be delivering the writer’s experiences, observations and anecdotes.

Palin’s plunging popularity is already offering enough of a threat to her…er…lack of presidential ambitions. Lying to the public that’s already skeptical of the general truthfulness of memoirs may just be closing the book on her campaign before it ever begins.

[Yahoo]