Maybe I don't want to be her after all

Damn. Turns out that Margaret B. Jones, who I admired a few days ago, isn't actually a former gang member and foster child; she's a privileged upper-middle class girl from Sherman Oaks.

Ms. Seltzer, 33, who is known as Peggy, admitted that the personal story she told in the book was entirely fabricated. She insisted, though, that many of the details in the book were based on the experiences of close friends she had met over the years while working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles.

It's too bad. The publisher has recalled her book (dang it! I was going to order it this weekend, and decided to wait until I'd paid the bills.), but as the editor says,

“She seems to be very, very naïve,” Ms. McGrath said. “There was a way to do this book honestly and have it be just as compelling.”

Indeed. If her current story is true, though, there's certainly still enough there for a semi-fictionalized narrative; even if it's all complete nonsense, it sounds like she's written a novel worth reading.

I'm always sort of fascinated by these "scandals" where someone writes a good book and then it turns out omg, they weren't who they said they were! It's kind of odd. If the work is good, the work is good; the author's identity really shouldn't matter.

Of course, in cases like this--where part of the interest in the book is based on its claim to represent a particular point of view--people can feel betrayed when they find out that the pov being represented is fictional (or fictionalized). But. I would be very interested in reading the book anyway, and I hope it doesn't disappear completely. The problem of authors writing fictionalized (or partly fictionalized) memoirs/history is as old as literature itself, and runs the range from pure fabrication to metaphor to generic embellishment to the inevitable fact that narrative shapes experience. Aphra Behn really did go to Surinam, and may very well have witnessed or heard a story about an impressive and rebellious Coromantian slave whose life ended tragically; but it's also undeniable that the love story of Oroonoko and Imoinda is shaped according to the romantic conventions of her day. Olaudah Equiano may not have been born in Africa (though this argument is still being debated), but his autobiography is nonetheless historically and formally important.

Nonetheless, of course we *are* interested in divining the facts and fictions in stories like these, even after their topical interest has faded. It's a complicated, central, and fascinating aspect of how we read. It's been a problem for us at least since Cervantes, Behn, and DeFoe invented the novel--poor Quijote, driven mad by not being able to distinguish fact from fiction. Made aware of it, we can trace it back further; look at how Augustine claims that his life revolves around the meaningless boyhood theft of some pears. The stories behind the story end up being part of what's fascinating about these books, just like the question of how much of Seltzer's "memoir" is true and how much isn't is surely going to remain part of what's intriguing about hers.

I don't envy Seltzer's position right now. But obviously she's got some writing chops, and clearly she can make up a damn good story. Once the scandal fades away, those two things will remain.



(I just clicked over to Amazon; they say they still have the book in stock. I ordered it. Here's hoping they ship it tomorrow, instead of sending me an apologetic "this book has been recalled" email.)