Lee Israel, a biographer fallen on hard times, turned to theft and forgery to make ends meet. She was good–two of her phony Noel Coward letters were included in last year’s The Letters of Noel Coward (Knopf). Somewhat contrite, she’s now published a book about her crimes, called Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Simon & Schuster). (And she’s not really asking. That’s a line she put in the mouth of Dorothy Parker.) From the New York Times (”She Says It’s True, Her Memoir of Forging,” by Julie Bosman):

Hers is not a memoir in the style of Margaret Seltzer, whose account, as Margaret B. Jones, of gang life in South-Central Los Angeles turned out to be completely bogus; or Mr. Frey, whose books “A Million Little Pieces” and “My Friend Leonard” contained exaggerated and fabricated details about his drug addiction and recovery.

“Their memoirs were fraudulent, and my memoir is not fraudulent,” said Ms. Israel, who gave her age as “somewhere in my 60s.” “But I did fraudulent things.”

Thomas Mallon (Fellow Travelers, 2007), reviewing the book for the Times (”Forging On“), writes that, even though she was bad, she’s good:

If I were a librarian, I wouldn’t let Lee Israel through the door, but I’d certainly make sure I had her latest book on the shelves. If I were an editor, I’d sign her up to write a biography of Louise Brooks — and not just to keep her out of trouble.

But how’s she going to write that book if she can’t get into the library?

Update: In the New York Post (”Forging a Literary Path“), Michael Riedel shares a personal encounter with Lee Israel.

You don’t see this every day: a memoirist questioning his own veracity (”Times Columnist Uncovers His Darkest Story,” by Howard Kurtz, Washington Post). The author is David Carr and the book is The Night of the Gun.

But recounting exactly what happened is another story, which is why he uses the approach of interviewing people from his dark past, many from the mid-1980s. Carr recognizes that “the meme of abasement followed by salvation is a durable device in literature,” but life is invariably more complicated. “Can I tell you a true story about the worst day of my life? No,” he writes.

On that day, he recalls, his friend Donald, during a drug-induced argument, pulled a gun on him. Except that he tracked down Donald, who swears it was Carr who brandished the .38 special, and another friend who knew where Carr kept the weapon stashed. If Carr was wrong about that, he wonders, what else was he wrong about?

(Vanessa Bush’s review of Night of the Gun will appear in the August issue of Booklist. She likes it.)

Well, it wasn’t the Hell’s Angels that were the problem, apparently, but still, a recent James Frey book event gave some attendees more than they bargained for (”Crowds Collide,” Page Six):

May 17, 2008 — JAMES Frey - who told Page Six, “I’m trying to break the mold of what readings can be” - had a mini-riot break out at his session Thursday night at Whiskey-a-Go-Go in Hollywood. Six bouncers tried to remove six hooligans who were there more for heavy-metal band Black Tide than to hear him read from his novel “Bright Shiny Morning.” Literary types were horrified as the brawl spilled out to the sidewalk, where it took 20 cops to quell the violence. Three men were arrested.

Word is that no members of Black Tide were injured by disapproving Frey fanatics, although they did endure a severe frowning . . . .

So James Frey apparently told Evgenia Peretz that he had no plans to speak to the press after speaking to her (”James Frey’s Morning After,” Vanity Fair). Artful wording, that–plans, after all, do change (”James Frey takes a novel approach with ‘Bright Shiny Morning’,” by Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today). And change again:

And again (”The Hot Seat: James Frey,” by John Sellers, Time Out New York). 

Time Out New York: In Vanity Fair, you said you weren’t doing any more press. What gives?
James Frey: There are two answers to that. The first is that I felt more comfortable doing that interview than I expected to. And second, my publisher asked me to do more press, and it’s my job to do what my publisher asks me to do.

Liar! says Galleycat’s Emily Gould.

The video I want to see is of one of his heavy metal publicity events, with security by the Hell’s Angels. Frey told TONY that the bikers make him feel safer–I guess he didn’t see Gimme Shelter.

How’s that blog coming along? I see.

Much more interesting than all of this is Sam Anderson’s profile of Augusten Burroughs (”The Memory Addict,” New York), “the last of the big-game memoirists.” Burroughs castigates Frey and insists on the infallibility of his own memory. Anderson is skeptical, wondering whether certain feats of observation have been performed strictly for his benefit, but ends the encounter a bit more credulous–still guardedly–of his subject’s claims. I loved this line:

Burroughs’s new book, A Wolf at the Table, is being promoted as “his first memoir in five years”—a gem of self-canceling hype roughly equivalent to “her first wedding since last fall” or “his ninth bar mitzvah since he was 13.”

Writers can be odd, difficult people, but I’m beginning to wonder if memoirists are more so than most. And speaking of difficult, what if you were really, truly Unable to Forget (Jerry Adler, Newsweek):

. . . what would it be like to recall almost every day of your life since childhood?—and then unintentionally answers: it’s like being stuck on an airplane watching an endless loop of security-camera video.

I’ve heard of this phenomenon–where’s her book deal? Oh. The punch line?

I hate to admit it, but confronted with a memoir that is guaranteed to be completely accurate, I can’t help thinking that, with the same material, a writer with a little imagination could have written a much better book.

Is it just me, or does Frey seem deeply uninteresting in the clip with Meredith Viera? Given how colorfully his personality has been portrayed in written interviews, I can only imagine him shouting instructions at himself (Don’t screw this up! Be contrite! Stay cool!). I’m confident that American Libraries editor-in-chief Leonard Kniffel will force him to be more forthcoming this June. My Friend Leonard, indeed!

Yet another article about the problem of memoirs helps prove Jessa Crispin’s contention that “Fifty percent of all books coverage these days is, ‘Who is telling the truth?’ ” (”Memoirs: Whose Truth — and Does It Matter,” by Matthew Shaer and Teresa Mendez, Christian Science Monitor).  But it’s worth reading anyway:

She points to Augusten Burroughs, whose memoir, “Running with Scissors,” has been subjected to particularly intense scrutiny following a string of allegations. “It’s a constant rehashing,” says Crispin. “Now, when people think of memoir, they begin to associate it with lying.”

David Sedaris, who estimates the truthiness, or realishness, of his forthcoming When You Are Engulfed in Flames at “97 percent,” thinks we’re not seeing things in correct proportion:

“What’s interesting to me,” he says, “is that we live in a time when our government is telling us some pretty profound lies. And then James Frey writes a book and it turns out some of it’s not true. No one asked for their vote back, but everyone wanted back the money they’d spent on that book. We’re in the shadow of huge lies and getting angry about the small ones.”

Speak for yourself, Sedaris. I’m mad as hell about the huge lies, and only somewhat angry about the small ones. And while keeping a sense of proportion is important, isn’t it important that everyone tell the truth, politicians and authors alike? And if fudging some facts is important to achieve a larger truth, fine: just tell us you’re doing it.*

*This option not available to politicians.

For someone who seems a little media-shy, I’m not sure that blogging is the next best move for James Frey. The feedback tends to be, shall we say, forthright and immediate. Then again, there’s nothing quite so sincere as blogging on Amazon when you’ve got a book coming out.

All right, this will be my last fraud-related post of the week. Probably. On Media Assassin, Harry Allen has video of Margaret Seltzer, aka Margaret B. Jones (Love and Consequences, 2008), explaining what her upbringing was like:

“We used to say, growing up, ‘I’m not from America, I’m from South Central L.A.’”

Ouch!

(Via.)

As previously noted, James Frey is coming back. In his first interview since his second Oprah appearance, he rehashes the whole affair with Vanity Fair’s Evgenia Peretz (”James Frey’s Morning After“). As much as I’ve always believed that it doesn’t matter whether writers are personally likeable–great art has often been created by jerks, and vice versa–well, he comes off as pretty hard to like.

I also thought, however, as I have with other fraudsters, that I can kind of see how the whole making-things-up business could slip out of control. When you’re desperate to get published, it’s probably easy to see agents, publishers, publicists, etc. as experts whose wisdom should be obeyed. And if you’ve never been in the public eye, it’s probably hard to imagine how a few fabrications will come back to haunt you.

That said, Frey still has to take responsibility for what happened. I’m not one to suggest that memoirs should be fact-checked as a rule, but when authors claim pasts for themselves that carry a certain moral weight–say, as ex-convicts, gang members, holocaust survivors–then the publishers should verify their claims. A memoir of a life in publishing doesn’t necessarily require the same treatment.

Remember, the easiest solution is still to publish them as fiction. Or humor. Or at least with a suitably broad, large-print disclaimer.

Peretz’s piece does a nice job of tracking Frey’s own attitude toward and claims about his book’s veracity. But the guy with the “ftbsitttd” tattoo still seems unrepentant:

“The enduring myth of the American memoir as a precise form is bullshit and needed to go away,” he says. “Although the experience was a nightmare, if I started the process of ending that myth, I’m perfectly fine with it. I’ve said all along that I never wanted my books published as memoirs.”

If he never wanted his books to be published as memoirs, why does he care about the memoir form? I guess he developed an interest along the way.

He may be coming back, but he won’t, apparently, be coming back to Chicago.

The literary news is just so entertaining lately. For instance, confidence men have been targeting bookstores, posing as published authors. Yes, you read that right. In the L.A. Times (”Hoaxes hit bookstores“), Scott Timberg reports that bookstore workers have received calls from people pretending to be Mark Sarvas (Harry Revised, 2008), Eric Gower (The Breakaway Cook), Nick Hornby (Slam, 2007), Ray Bradbury (Now and Forever, 2007), and Russell Banks (The Reserve, 2007)–most of them claiming that something bad had happened to them and that they needed money wired to them right away.

Authors are often short of money, but really.

And Mark Sarvas? No offense to the always interesting Elegant Variation blogger, but he doesn’t seem like enough of a “name” to serve as the lynchpin for a con. Although I guess you might assume he needs money more than Ray Bradbury does. And Skylight Books manager Karen Slattery seems to like him:

“There is this sense that bookstores have this special relationship with authors, that they help them out. And if it had really been Mark Sarvas I definitely would have done it.”

Ashes to ashes, pulp to pulp. A forthcoming biography of Madame de Maintenon, Louis XIV’s mistress, written by Veronica Buckley (Christina, Queen of Sweden, 2004) is being recalled due to its reliance on a faulty source (”Hoax diary snares Bloomsbury,” by Claire Armitstead, the Guardian’s theblogbooks):

The problem, it turns out, is with the attribution of a little-known document Le Journal Secret de Louis XIV. Little known because it was in fact “reconstructed from historical sources” by a mischievous French scholar in 1998.

Prolific University of Florida professor James Twitchell (Branded Nation, 2004; Living It Up, 2002) has admitted to plenty of plagiarism, according to the Gainesville Sun (”UF professor Twitchell admits he plagiarized in several of his books,” by Jack Stripling):

Twitchell initially denied a pattern of plagiarism, but the 64-year-old professor was contrite and ashamed when recently confronted with a larger body of evidence.

“It’s my responsibility to make sure that the words and ideas are my own and, if not, that they are properly credited. In many cases, I have not done this,” Twitchell wrote in an e-mail Wednesday. “I have used the words of others and not properly attributed them. I am always in a hurry to get past descriptions to make my points, a hurry that has now rightly resulted in much shame and embarrassment. I have cheated by using pieces of descriptions written by others.”

(Via Galleycat.)

And I don’t know why, but this last item seems to fit on this page, too. The hype for James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning is growing (”He’s Back: James Frey Mixes Fact and Fiction, This Time with Art,” by Kate Taylor, The New York Sun), and there’s going to be an expensive art-book companion to the novel, called Wives, Wheels, Weapons. Which makes sense, because he’s not just a writer, he’s an artist.

“Despite the fact that he writes books, he’s much more a part of the art world than the literary world,” Mr. Frey’s friend John McWhinnie said of him.  

And:

The sections about L.A. history and culture in “Bright Shiny Morning” are “sprinkled with facts that may or may not be accurate,” Mr. McWhinnie said. “The book opens with a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer that nothing in it can be considered true,” he continued. Mr. Frey intentionally mixed true and made-up “facts” — mixing real names of gang members with fake ones, for instance — in order to highlight both the factitiousness of L.A. culture and the ironies in his own authorial past.

Interestingly but perhaps not surprisingly, the book tour will avoid bookstores and focus on rock clubs, with heavy metal, light shows, and projected images supporting the author. I guess that way, if there are hecklers, it will be much harder to hear them.

Wonder if anyone will shout “Frey Bird!”?