BUSTED! Plagiarists, Fakers & Literary Hoaxes

[batmom]

roseprose said:

cherryames said:

Martha Beck, who writes a column in Oprah magazine, wrote 2 memoirs - one about her baby son with Down's Syndrome and one about being abused by her father, a famous Mormon professor. Her ex-husband says she tried to sell the baby book as fiction, didn't get anywhere and so sold it as memoir.

I heard the same thing about A Million Little Pieces.

James Frey shopped his manuscript to every single publishing house as fiction and they all passed. Changed it to a memoir, shops it to the same publishers, and suddenly gets a deal.

You'd think after that fiasco, Oprah's people would have been on the lookout for an embarassment like The Education of Little Tree.

Contrast that with Dave Eggers and What is the What who labled the story fiction rather than biography because Valentino Deng (who's story Eggers was recording) didn't trust that he hadn't mixed up his memories with those of others.

[cantienne]

The JT LeRoy article...damn, that is bizarre, and far too close to the kind of sockpuppeting you see on Fandom_Wank. And the sad, troubled, sickly teen is really...a much older woman with image issues.

I never read any of LeRoy's fiction, but did some reading online, including a piece "he" wrote for the NY Times on going to EuroDisney. That short piece was enough to see that this isn't a pseudonym or a persona, because Laura Albert kept up this character as the author of a nonfiction article, and didn't let the people who commissioned the article in on the fact that LeRoy was a construction. Plus, within the article, LeRoy manages to find a way to work in "his" past as a hustler and the son of a stripper -- things that of course encourage readers of his fiction to understand that it is autobiographical. The writing itself is unremarkable, which argues for most of the interest in LeRoy being based on "his" life and circumstances, not his talent as an author.

So Laura Albert clearly has a huge chip on her shoulder - for whatever reason, she can't accept herself (to the extent that she's apparently had a lot of plastic surgery?) and is somehow angry at other people for it. Her "how dare you stop allowing me to take advantage of you!" stance is interesting. The stupidity of other people doesn't excuse treating them badly, and using the image of an abandoned, abused teenager to play on people's sympathies is just revolting. That people were willing to get sucked into it and to offer critical praise for writing that would have been dull or subpar without the backstory is also revolting, but it doesn't excuse her. If she had done this as a deliberate expose of the literary industry, that would have been a bit different, but Albert seems to have been in it for the attention, the name-dropping, and the expense accounts - articles have multiple references to her inviting an entourage to dinner on the interviewer's tab and abandoning them with a huge bill.

[luciano]

Mischa Defonseca has admitted that her memoir, Mischa: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years, was made up:

Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in Massachusetts, admitted through her lawyers this week that her best-selling book, "Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years," was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.

[...]

Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years. She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.

Her two Brussels-based lawyers said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical. In the statement, Defonseca said she never fled her home in Brussels during the war to find her parents.

Defonseca says her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.

The wolf thing combined with the whole child-killing-a-Nazi thing should have caused some pause, people.

[Smilla]

The wolf thing combined with the whole child-killing-a-Nazi thing should have caused some pause, people.

Yeah, and also...

Defonseca says her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.

If this actually is true, why couldn't she have just written that story? What...not traumatic enough?

[satellite]

luciano said:

Mischa Defonseca has admitted that her memoir, Mischa: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years, was made up:

Defonseca, a Belgian writer now living in Massachusetts, admitted through her lawyers this week that her best-selling book, "Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years," was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France.

[...]

Defonseca wrote in her book that Nazis seized her parents when she was a child, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years. She claimed she found herself trapped in the Warsaw ghetto and was adopted by a pack of wolves that protected her.

Her two Brussels-based lawyers said the author acknowledged her story was not autobiographical. In the statement, Defonseca said she never fled her home in Brussels during the war to find her parents.

Defonseca says her real name is Monique De Wael and that her parents were arrested and killed by Nazis as Belgian resistance fighters.

The wolf thing combined with the whole child-killing-a-Nazi thing should have caused some pause, people.

Adopted by wolves! LMAO! I'll pick up my express ticket to hell at the station

[Deleted]

Wolves? Seriously? How did this get past a publisher? That's it. I need some cash so I'm writing my memoir. I'm the child of polygamous circus folk. I escaped my sideshow cage with my best friend, a chimp named Mr. Winky. Poor Winky died during our escape over the US/Mexico border and I was adopted by a family of armadillos. That's why, to this day, I curl into a ball when startled by loud noises. And I'm on heroin. Lots and lots of heroin.

[dwanollah]

dguzpy said:

Wolves? Seriously? How did this get past a publisher? That's it. I need some cash so I'm writing my memoir. I'm the child of polygamous circus folk. I escaped my sideshow cage with my best friend, a chimp named Mr. Winky. Poor Winky died during our escape over the US/Mexico border and I was adopted by a family of armadillos. That's why, to this day, I curl into a ball when startled by loud noises. And I'm on heroin. Lots and lots of heroin.

I fucking love you, dguzpy.

[nadia]

What sort of consequences do these fakers face? Is there any legal action that can be taken against them, or are scorn and a wounded reputation all they face? Because if so, dguzpy's idea sounds really fucking good. I can deal with everyone thinking I'm a douche if it'll make me millions.

[Deleted]

Well, Laura Albert (JT LeRoy) was sued by a film company for fraud. They had been planning to make a movie of one of the books and when the hoax came to light they nullified the contract and sued her. She lost the case and had to pay the company over $100,000 in damages.

[intlschizo]

dguzpy said:

Wolves? Seriously? How did this get past a publisher? That's it. I need some cash so I'm writing my memoir. I'm the child of polygamous circus folk. I escaped my sideshow cage with my best friend, a chimp named Mr. Winky. Poor Winky died during our escape over the US/Mexico border and I was adopted by a family of armadillos. That's why, to this day, I curl into a ball when startled by loud noises. And I'm on heroin. Lots and lots of heroin.

It don't mean a thing
Without child mo-les-tiiiiiing!
Doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo wop doo-waaaaah!