March 10, 2008
Untruth and Consequences
If you’ve been under a rock — or been so obsessed with the presidential primaries that you’ve tuned out all other news — you might have missed the story of Margaret Seltzer, an Oregon writer whose memoir of growing up in the gangland culture of Los Angeles was exposed last week as a hoax.
In her book Love and Consequences, which she published under the name Margaret B. Jones, Ms. Seltzer falsely claimed to have been raised as a foster child, one of the few white faces in her South Central neighborhood. (In fact, she was raised by her parents in the San Fernando Valley.) She also wrote that one of her parents is Native American. And this was not just a literary scam: She has apparently peddled the same tales to friends and acquaintances in Eugene.
Yesterday, Gordon Sayre, a professor of English at the University of Oregon, used the pages of The Register-Guard, in Eugene, to mount a partial defense of Ms. Seltzer, who was a student of his in 2001:
When early on the morning of March 4 I went out to get the newspaper and learned that I had read a novel, not a memoir, I was neither angry nor disappointed. If Peggy’s assertion that she had spent part of her childhood on the Quinault reservation was untrue, if the paper she had written about this experience was based on false premises, at least it was backed up by enough research to be convincing.
Other students in the course have told me that their grandmother or grandfather was Native American, without claiming or demonstrating any greater knowledge of Indian culture than their classmates. Perhaps the only thing modern Americans find more satisfying than asserting their own ethnic identities is challenging those of others, and perhaps the book-buying public would rather debunk good memoirs than enjoy good novels.
Along the way, he mentions the dispute over the authenticity of the 19th-century slave memoirist known as Equiano, a story The Chronicle looked at in 2005.
Mr. Sayre’s essay has drawn more scorn than praise. At Where The Hell Am I?, Regina Walton, a South Central native who recently earned a master’s degree in South Korea (assuming this blog isn’t yet another hoax), writes:
What irritates me about Sayre’s former student is she’s spun a tale but said she was there. SHE WASN’T THERE! Sure, there are gang bangers in the ‘hood. I know this only from a distance because my parents worked hard to keep me isolated from it, but Seltzer marketed her story as firsthand experience. No, if anything, that experience was secondhand, if not third- or fourth-hand knowledge.
With all due respect to Professor Sayre, readers understand that things might be intensified for effect. However, the point remains that the things they read about are, or should be, based on fact. All writers are taught to anticipate their audience, but the point is Seltzer lied.
More harsh words for Mr. Sayre are here and here.
Meanwhile, Bard College’s Daniel Mendelsohn, who documented his caffeine consumption for The Chronicle a few years ago, rendered a severe judgment on Ms. Seltzer and other faux memoirists in a New York Times essay yesterday:
Empathy and pity are strong and necessary emotions that deepen our sense of connection to others; but they depend on a kind of metaphorical imagination of what others are going through. The facile assumption that we can literally “feel others’ pain” can be dangerous to our sense of who we are — and, more alarmingly, who the others are, too. “We all have AIDS,” a recent public-awareness campaign declared. Well, no, actually we don’t: and to pretend that we do, even rhetorically, debases the anguish of those who are stricken.
(Photo of South Central Los Angeles by the Flickr user Bernard Mickey Wrangle. Used under a Creative Commons license.)
David Glenn | Posted on Monday March 10, 2008 | PermalinkComments
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If you tell a story that isn’t literally true and call it a novel, i.e. label it fiction, that’s as it should be. Tell the same story but claim it’s factual, that’s very different.
A few decades ago, it was “We all killed JFK.” Well, no, as a matter of fact, most of us didn’t have a thing to do with it.
It seems to me we’ve reached a point where some people simply have a hard time telling truth from falsehood, thanks to a culture that has dragged relativity and uncertainty out of their proper domain in physics and has recklessly applied them in areas where they are totally inappropriate. Friedrich Hayek warned us about this decades ago. He was right.
— Dan Kirklin Mar 10, 03:48 PM #
Sayre’s ability to rationalize deception is appalling. “…at least it was backed up by enough research to be convincing.” Is plagiarism OK if it is done artfully? Is it OK to lie in academic work if the lie is well-intentioned? At what point do Sayre and other apologists draw a line and say, “This is wrong”?
— John Mar 10, 04:45 PM #
Not only is it wrong, it’s just plain weird.
— marci Mar 10, 06:54 PM #
ha! Thanks for quoting me and the link ;)
No, my blog isn’t a hoax. I’ve got the documents, the diplomas and can order the sealed transcripts to prove it.
Regina Walton aka ExpatJane
— Regina Walton Mar 10, 07:14 PM #
Isn’t it a kind of illness, not to be able to distinguish actual events vs. imaginary? This isn’t about being too empathetic…it’s about believing your own fabrications! I agree, Marci….weird.
— kgotthardt Mar 10, 07:18 PM #