BUSTED! Plagiarists, Fakers & Literary Hoaxes

[Auroranorth]

Maybe she's trying to show people what not to do?

[Mutagen]

OMG, I remember seeing It Happened to Nancy in the bookstore when I was a pre-teen. I read the summary and was totally horrified. I had no idea it was fake.

As for Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, some genius reporter at The Stranger had the idea to bring them together for a joint interview.. Also contains an interesting analysis of Glass and Blair's different reactions to being exposed.

[intlschizo]

A couple of my favorite intentional hoaxes:

I, Libertine, 1956: "'Gadzooks,' quoth I, 'but here's a saucy bawd!'"

Atlanta Nights, 2005: "He had the shoulders of a water buffalo and the waist of a ferret. He was reddened by his many sporting activities which he managed to keep up within addition to his busy job as a stock broker, and that reminded Irene of safari hunters and virile construction workers which contracted quite sexily to his suit-and-tie demeanor.[/color] (Bonus: the "reviews"[/color] are hilarious as well)

[indybear]

intlschizo said:

A couple of my favorite intentional hoaxes:

I, Libertine, 1956: "'Gadzooks,' quoth I, 'but here's a saucy bawd!'"

Atlanta Nights, 2005: "He had the shoulders of a water buffalo and the waist of a ferret. He was reddened by his many sporting activities which he managed to keep up within addition to his busy job as a stock broker, and that reminded Irene of safari hunters and virile construction workers which contracted quite sexily to his suit-and-tie demeanor.

[/color] (Bonus: the "reviews"[/color] are hilarious as well)[/quote]
The fanfic is the best!

[aims]

Oh dear God, Atlanta Nights is just a classic. My eyes are watering from trying not to laugh on my break. Yes, you will lose some brain cells reading this thing.


Best line so far..."she, had coasted through life like a toboggan down the snow hill of life".

And "Y'all'll gets a new car on Monday".

[BinkyBetsy]

I'm not sure where I stand on All That Glittered: My Life With the Supremes by Tony Turner. I've read it many times, just for the heck of it, because the writing style flows so well that it's mesmerizing. It wasn't until recently that I found out some people think that everything in the book that's not plagiarized is a flat-out lie.

Turner claims that he was a hanger-on of the Supremes in their heyday, and a particular friend of Florence Ballard. The detractors say he was merely an obsessed fan who has fabricated a history with the group. Yet I'm not so sure. They're basing this on several things:

-- The alleged absence of photos of Turner with anyone in the group. But my copy has several such photos, including a candid of Turner singing at a party, and a shot of him with Berry Gordy. Of course, I only have his word on it that he's the one in the photos, but it's the same skinny black kid with glasses in each one.

-- Ballard introducing herself to Turner by asking how to get to the Ed Sullivan Theater, which was not so called in 1964. True, but perhaps he didn't remember what it had been called then. It's the same theater; they just changed the name. Anyway, if someone's going to do a debunking, they should present a list of such discrepancies, not just point out one and say that that proves everything.

-- The fact that many of the anecdotes were covered in other bios of the Supremes together and separately. Well, I've read Mary Wilson's book (snore), and J. Randy Taraborelli's bio of Diane Ross (awesome), and there is some overlap, but Turner does not by any means describe them in the same way the others do. Wilson's writing style in particular is very dry, mostly just presenting the facts without much illustration, and it doesn't seem as if Turner cribbed from her. Maybe used her anecdotes as a jumping-off point, but in that case, he's still a hella good writer. Which is the other charge: if he didn't get it from another bio, then he just made it up.

Plus, though it's true that Turner wouldn't have been present for many of the incidents, he doesn't always claim to have been an eyewitness. In many cases, he presents it as "This is what Flo told me," and that point just gets lost in the full-speed-ahead narrative. I can't help thinking that this may be a denial similar to that of John Belushi's family when Wired was published: It is true, but they don't want to hear it, so the author is a jerk.

Anyway, I'm open to the possibility that Turner was not an associate of the group, but someone will really have to go through it point by point. Like disproving the dog incident by proving that Ross never owned dogs, and like that. It's still a good read, though.

[jaghetersimon]

OT: what was Belushi's family's reaction when Wired was published? What exactly did the book say? I know that John Belushi claims that it's lies.

[intlschizo]

Ooh! I just remembered some more good ones:

Mafia Cop: The True Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob, by Lou Eppolito. Dude is a guy from a Mafia family. He (supposedly) becomes one of New York's top ranked police officers, but he becomes a target and eventually loses his career because of his Mafia ties. Well, turns out he lost his career because he was as crooked as they came[/color]. This one stunned me, because I remember thinking, if your ass was guilty, why the HELL would you write a book about how you were innocent?

Also, Sleepers, the novel-turned-movie by Lorenzo Carraterra, has pretty much been debunked[/color] as fiction[/color].

[piscessiren]

cantienne said:

So, in the last two decades, Martha Beck has

1. Co-authored a book on "overcoming" homosexuality (1990)
2. Broken with Mormon church (1993)
3. Separated from (2003) and divorced (2004) her husband
4. Publicly accused her father of repeated sexual abuse based on memories she recovered as an adult (2005)
5. Come out as gay, as has her former husband (2005)

Repeated major traumas that show complete upheavals and reversals in judgment, all occurring well into her adult years (she's 45 or so). And her job? Life coach. Of course.

Oprah sure has a knack of surrounding herself with these shady types.

[BinkyBetsy]

jaghetersimon said:

OT: what was Belushi's family's reaction when Wired was published? What exactly did the book say? I know that John Belushi claims that it's lies.

They were just outraged, but I'm not sure why. Bob Woodward was the author, and it was called "Wired." As was the movie, but I'll get to that in a moment.

My perspective on this is not perfect. It's not the perspective of John B.'s contemporaries; it's that of someone who did not read the book until after Kurt Cobain was in the ground, and who was a fan of Warren Zevon despite (almost in a way because of) his drunken depravity. So it takes more than "OMG he used drugs" to upset me. I read it as a sad, touching portrayal of someone who thought he was invincible and found out otherwise. It seemed fairly evenhanded, and John B. did not come off as an SOB, just a brat. It didn't "say" anything that others can't back up; they're just somehow outraged that anything was said at all.

OTOH, I've also read "Live From New York," a history of SNL in general, and the anecdotes shared by John B.'s fellow castmates and associates are appalling. I can't believe someone didn't knock his block off, and I can't believe that anyone who knew John thought Woodward was the one slandering him. Sounds like Woodward left out a lot of damning incidents. But in any case, Jim B. in particular was outraged, cursing Woodward in the media and to his face. I discussed this on another forum once, and someone speculated that Jim B. had expected Woodward to uncover some kind of conspiracy that killed Jim's brother, so he wouldn't have to accept that John did it to himself.

Now, the movie. It was a travesty. Michael Chiklis as John and Ray Sharkey as his guardian angel. Didn't give any clear perspective on how John lived, much less how he died. But I do know that Jim B. renewed his hatred of Woodward while the film was in pre-production, and, threatened the screenwriter. It's entirely possible that the reason the film is such a confused noise is that the writer was afraid to portray anything that actually happened. ETA: But hey, it was Chiklis's film debut, so something good came of it.