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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 & [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]