Memoirs: Facts or Fictions?

[natchou]

With the JT LeRoy controversy and James Frey being accused of making "A million little pieces" up, we should start to wonder if every story about someone's life is fact or fiction. Do they tell it like it is or do they try and put some meat into their bony lives??

Discuss.

[mrpancake]

Wasn't Running With Scissors partially made up? I thought I remember hearing it somewhere, but I may have imagined it because I hated it so much after hearing it hailed as some wonderfully witty and hysterical novel with a great story. Really? I must have read something different which was a poorly written embellished autobiography with the intention to gross-out and be edgy and racy!

[Deleted]

mrpancake said:

Wasn't Running With Scissors partially made up?

Yes.

Six members of the Turcotte family, whose patriarch was Dr. Rodolph H. Turcotte, who died in 2000, are suing Burroughs, his agent, and publisher St. Martin's Press in Middlesex Superior Court. The suit demands a public retraction of the book and a public statement that it is fiction and not a memoir. The suit also asks that the publisher be enjoined from continued publication and distribution of the book.

I consider Augusten Burroughs to be a David Sedaris wannabe anyway. (I love David Sedaris so much it scares me.)

[ahenobarbus]

The worst I've ever seen was Norma Khouri, author of Honor Lost. It turned out she swindled an elderly woman out of her life's savings, then fled the country with her family to escape the FBI. Then, pretending to be woman who grew up in Jordan (in fact, she grew up in Chicago and went to Catholic school), she made up this story about how her best friend in Jordan, a Muslim woman, was killed because she expressed interest in dating a Christian man.

Several Jordanian feminists said the book really set back their cause, and it later emerged that Norma was really bigoted against Muslims, encouraging her roommate to break up with a Muslim boyfriend.

[Deleted]

I was devastated when I found out Carlos Castenada made up The Teachings of Don Juan. Ditto when I found out Wade Davis' Serpent and the Rainbow was mostly bullshit. They were my heroes, they were cool, they had adventures.

[laconicchick]

This is an interesting topic, because I just started taking a creative non-fiction class and we're reading some memoirs, including "My Turquoise Years" (has anyone heard of it?). I guess the question with memoirs and creative non-fiction is how MUCH is made up -- in the case of "My Turquoise Years," does she really remember EXACTLY what people said 40 years ago, and perfect details of certain days?

Unfortunately I don't really have anything other than that to contribute, because I haven't read a lot of memoirs (if any), so I have noooo idea which are made up or how much.

[sugaree]

A novel has to stand or fall on its own merits. So many of these "I have suffered as Joab" whine-tomes styled as memoirs would be flops if marketed as novels because they are so implausable or pointless. But we're intrigued when we can tell our friends about this really bizarre true story that really happened.

Recreating a conversation is part of the art of the memoir. Sharing the perspective of one's own unique reality is part of the art of the memoir. Making crap up, especially if other people get dragged into it, is inethical and reprehensible.

[natchou]

Where did you guys read that "A child called It" was fake?? Because I saw the author's appearance on Oprah a couple of years ago and was feeling really sorry for what he went through. Now I wanna know the *real* story...

[mrpancake]

I consider Augusten Burroughs to be a David Sedaris wannabe anyway. (I love David Sedaris so much it scares me.)

Truer words were ne'er spoken. The thing One of the many things that was so lame for me about his book was that each event he recounted seemed really over the top. David Sedaris takes events from his unconventional family and life and portrays them in a still believable way. That, and he's actually funny.

I read A Child Called It when I was in 7th grade or so, and it pisses me off now that it was sold as a true story.

[Ripley]

The Education of Little Tree is also a book that is not a real memoir. This site discusses it.