LAist: Author Admits South Central Memoir is Fabrication

the_fine_print

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:43:41 -0800

As usual, to find the source of ethical pollution; follow the money trail. . . as long as it will sell truth is irrelevant. Rich people suck!

jrb

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:26:35 -0800

Well geeze Ross now yer talkin' miniseries.

Ross A. Lincoln

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:17:21 -0800

Damn it, you're right jrb. However, that doesn't mean I can't write about how, after serving the country in the first Gulf War, I became a heroin addicted chef in the seedy underbelly of Toronto, only to find redemption through my mastery of horse whispering. Sadly, after my prize horse died, I descended into a hellish addiciton to vicodin. Finally, I became the pope. And leader of the crips.

Andy Sternberg

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:54:18 -0800

Surprise, surprise -- thursday at Vroman's has been cancelled.

Callie Miller

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:47:31 -0800

Andy - You are SO right on about the print world vs. the online world. This kind of deceit would be called out in the online world well before someone wasted thousands (millions?) developing the book, printing the book and marketing it. Blogs and online writers have a history of vetting anything online and it's a shame the publishing houses repeatedly fail to do the basic checking that would be required to suss this out quite easily. I wonder how this will play at her reading Thursday night at Vroman's. Will it be her? Someone else pretending to be her? Or...will it be cancelled?

Andy Sternberg

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 14:03:12 -0800

Interesting to see these people get away with such things in books -- where it seems they'd immediately be debunked if they were written online. While pseudonyms do fine in online publishing, faked identities and fiction sold as fact don't. But in the world of corporate book publishing, it seems there's another James Frey, Margaret Jones, or jt leroy every six months or so.

jrb

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:16:36 -0800

"Meanwhile, I've got this great idea to write a book about my years as President of the United States." Nah! Never fly Ross. You need to come up with something where you were born into poverty, wrote bad checks, pimped out your Moma, went to prison, pulled yourself up by you bootstraps, over came adversity, and THEN became Pez. That kinda shit sells!!

Donna Lethal

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:39:41 -0800

I love when these things happen. Did you read about the one in the UK, "Wolf Woman"? There's a movie in the works based on her book about how she survived as a child among wolves to flee Nazis. Guess what?

Ross A. Lincoln

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:16:48 -0800

Apparrently, all you have to do to get a book deal is waltz into a publisher's office and tell them you have a great idea for a memoir and they'll sign you right up. Jeez. And this is just a week after a woman who wrote a Holocaust memoir admitted she'd made up the whole goddamned thing. Do publishing companies not understanding the concept of "vetting" and "fact checking"? Meanwhile, I've got this great idea to write a book about my years as President of the United States.

raul

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 09:30:36 -0800

It's a week of fakes. Robert Irvine of "Dinner:Impossible" fame was fired by the Food Network for embellishing his resume. Apparently he didn't cook for royalty and American presidents.

AsherBaruch

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:32:18 -0800

According to the NY Times article, Seltzer referrenced gang bangers as friends she knew from Grant high school. I've been gone for a while, but viewing Grant as a poverty stricken pool of turmoil seems laughably stupid to me.