Attack of the Fake Memoirs: Is Your Favorite Real Story Really Real?

In more innocent time, you could pick up a work of nonfiction and believe every word. With a tell-all biography, you might sprinkle a little salt on the work, thinking the author might be painting his subject in the most negative possible light.

What about an autobiography? Certainly that has to be true, right? The most reliable story of a person must be the one written by the author himself, even if he tries to paint himself in the best possible light.

Yet we have now seen two cases in which an autobiography has been found to partially or entirely untrue.

The first case was that of James Frey, who wrote a tale of addiction and redemption called "A Million Little Pieces." Oprah Winfrey loved it and made it a Book Club selection. Of course, it rocketed to the top of the book charts in 2005, selling more than 1.7 million copies.

However, the Smoking Gun website found that many elements of Frey's story were untrue or embellished. Frey admitted to Oprah that he made up parts of his tale. An embarrassed Oprah asked Frey why he did it.

"In order to get through the experience of an addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was, badder than I was," he said. "It helped me cope. When I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image." - CNN.com

You would think such a huge breach of literary trust would cause book publishers to hire a few more fact checkers. You would be wrong, because it just happened again.

Margaret Setzer (writing as Margaret B. Jones) wrote a book called "Love and Consequences" about her time as a foster child dealing with gang life in South Central Los Angeles. The problem is, she grew with her biological parents in the cozy California suburb of Sherman Oaks.

Now, Riverhead Books has pulled thousands of copies of "Love and Consequences" off the shelves. The New York Times was also duped, as it ran a profile of Setzer before the scandal broke.

How could this have happened?

Publishers need to remember that their reputation rides on everything that bears their name.

"Until publishers start fact-checking their own nonfiction books, we should remember that profiles of unknown authors should always include reporting from other sources," said New York Times standards editor Craig Whitney.

Another problem is that fake memoirists will either weave fake stories into other people's real stories, or they will create elaborate backstories that will sometimes hold up under the researcher's microscope.

"The fact is that the author went to extraordinary lengths," said Riverhead Books publisher Geoffrey Kloske. "She provided people who acted as her foster siblings. There was a professor who vouched for her work."

Why would somebody do this? Money, fame and attention can be so alluring that an author will not, as the saying goes, let facts get in the way of a good story.

Also, with the advent of self-publishing, a memoir can go from pen to press without ever getting checked for accuracy and truth. I wrote a memoir of my life as a pro wrestling announcer called This Side of the Mic. I published it myself through iuniverse.com, and the only people who checked it were my brother and sister, who edited the manuscript.

I certainly could have made up the entire story. If my book had become a million-seller, I would have made untold amounts of money off a story that could have been a complete lie.

So what do we readers do? As I said in my AC article,"Can You Trust The Media?," you simply can't take anything at face value anymore. Whether it's a book, a blog, or a news report, you have to ask yourself, "How much do I trust the person telling me this story?"