I am not a big fan of memoirs - I'd probably read a bio before I read a memoir. I've always had the sneaky feeling that memoirs are one person's truth, and usually aren't very interested in them. So I'm really not surprised by this. I suspect if you were to go through many older memoirs you might find the same thing. It is sad tho, as many people read these assuming they are factual and enjoy them as true stories.

I remember when this story came out. It was obviously preposterous. A little girl wanders around Europe by herself? Raised by wolves? Many authorities raised questions at the time. The writer did lose her parents, in the Resistance, to the Nazis when she was a little girl so maybe she's a bubble off level, as they say. But what about the publisher?

It's a tricky one, isn't it.

The Moon's A Balloon by David Niven is massively entertaining, but nowadays it's considered that a very large number of the incidents are stories he'd merely heard and told as if he were there. But you know what? I don't think it matters a bit.

But A Million Little Pieces by James Frey - which might well contain as much that is true and as much that is false as Niven's book - feels like a betrayal. (Or it would if I'd read it, thinking it were true).

What's the difference? I think it may be (a) because I don't think Niven is in any way trying to pretend to be something he isn't and (b) because Niven wrote purely for our sheer entertainment, rather than playing on our emotions.

I seem to remember a similar discussion here over the best-seller The Long Walk by the Pole, Slavomir Rawicz, where he tells the remarkable story of his escape with a group of friends from a war time Siberian Gulag and walked through deserts and over mountains to the safety of India.
Doubt was much later cast on his 'story' as he couldn't prove any of it.
The BBC made a documentary about him and also found no proof, but if you read the comments on the programme (see below) many people still want the walk to have taken place and cite similar exploits from war-torn Europe.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Long Walk

Then there was Mutant Down Under. It was originally marketed as a memoir. I read it for a book group and to a person we all felt it was ridiculous. Sure enough, a few years later the book suddenly appeared in the fiction stacks.

Vee, similar to The Long Walk thing of readers wanting the story to be true is Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan. Mutant Message was first issued vaguely as a "peaceful self-published work," but apparently many readers assumed it was nonfiction and bought into what Morgan was saying about her New-Agey ideas of Australian Aborigines. It is now called a "novel," but still a lot of people are stating that even if it's a work of fiction, "it's as compelling as any truth."

When I was in college we actually had to read the works of Carlos Castaneda in an anthropology class. Later Castaneda was discredited as a hoaxer, but his books still sell well and a lot of readers still want them to be true.

I guess for some readers a book is more compelling if it is purported to be true. If given the "true" label, books sell better than if they are stated to be fictionalized, most of the time. It's all very fuzzy. Orwell's Down and Out in London and Paris is called a novel, though it is undoubtedly largely biographical, and Capote's In Cold Blood is called a "nonfiction novel." The ones that seem to sell best of all are those steeped in controversy -- "Is it fiction or nonfiction, real or made up?" seems to titillate. If proven to be hoaxes, there's great interest in the fraud...such as the unfolding of The Ern Malley Affair tickling me no end.

These fraudulent memoirs cast doubt on genuine ones, if there are any. Werner Herzog is always going on about "accountant's truth," but accountant's truth is important if one doesn't want to be dismissed as a manipulator.

Frieda, I was unfamiliar with 'Ern Malley' so looked it up . . . always learning something new here . . .. Is the book worth reading?
Talking of anthropology the Piltdown Man is another 'story' of this type, where various bits of skull-bone were glued together and aged to provide both the gullible public and the archaelogists with a 'missing link'. Or the Chinese fossil diggers/sellers who took-in the Nat Geog Mag with their glued together samples pertaining to show that some dinosaurs had simple wings.
I don't think the story of Grey Owl is well-known in the US, but fits well into the belive 'em . .or not catagory.
His books were very popular in the UK and the 'Empire' in the 1930's and 'Grey Owl' came to England and gave lectures to packed theatres, about conserving the wilderness and the life of an Indian; he even met King George VI the Queen and Princess Elizabeth.
It was only after his death that the truth gradually came out that he had been born in Hastings not Saskatchewan, brought up by strict Aunts and had always hankered for the simple life and left for Canada when the chance came.
There is a Richard Attenborough film, starring Pierce Brosnan as Grey Owl available on DVD. The movie was never released in the US.

Here is a link that might be useful: Grey Owl

I agree with all that has been said here in regard to memoirs being the "author's truth". I feel that way about Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle. It just seems hard to believe such vivid detailed memories starting at when she was three. Again, no proof has been offered. Many enjoyed the book - but that does not proof it should be shelved in non-fiction.

What, if any, restrictions could or should be placed on authors to guarantee their memoirs are truthful? It seems the more fantastic a memoir, the better it sells. Money is a powerful motivator to hush up family members who may blow the whistle on an embellished memoir.

PAM

How about The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter? This "autobiographical" book about a young half-Cherokee orphan who is raised by his Cherokee grandmother and half-Cherokee grandfather in the hills of Tennessee, is not only fiction, but the author was a white supremacist and a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

I've included a link below that tells this story.

Here is a link that might be useful: The true Education of Little Tree story

Then there's Beatrice Sparks: Go Ask Alice. The article doesn't indicate if the disclaimer was in the first edition.

Its only been recently that I heard that the Sparks book was marketed as a memoir. Thats not what I remember, reading it as a 16 year old. I thought it an excellent story, an cautionary one certainly. It never occurred to me that it was true. But I might be in the minority on this one.

And yet another one:
All Things Considered, March 4, 2008 · Margaret Jones' memoir, Love and Consequences, recounts her early days selling drugs in South Central Los Angeles as well as her eventual escape to college and publishing. If it sounds too good to be true, that's because it is. The story is just the latest in a string of frauds that have rocked the publishing industry.

Here is a link that might be useful: fraudulant memoir #i'velostcount

It must be unreliable tales open season in the newspapers this week.
I found the item below in today's Daily Telegraph

Here is a link that might be useful: Misery Memoir

Oh-oh, I read the O'Beirne book, Kathy's Story: A Childhood Hell Inside the Magdalen Laundries a couple of years ago. I was suspicious of all the awfulness happening to one person, but I must admit that I read it compulsively until it dawned on me that it was too sordidly interesting. Mis-lit, as in "misery literature" -- I've wondered why it sells so darn well, but the DT writer gives a pretty good explanation.

I did not "enjoy" Angela's Ashes as so many have done. And the Child Called It phenomenon just appalled me -- not the book itself, though the story was of horrendous abuse, but the fact that many readers were so "touched" by it. Read reviews at Amazon, Shelfari, LibraryThing, etc., and you notice certain readers consumed with these sorts of stories. I just don't know whether I should feel sorry for the readers -- this type of "literature" has been around for a long, long time. When I was a kid there were magazines that catered to the interest; they were usually called True Story or True Romance or "True" something. And it's not just lowbrow reading matter, a lot of literary works deal with that appeal.

How could I forget Angela's Ashes? McCourt was lionized by the NY literati who didn't care about the rebuttals that appeared. It suited their prejudices. That seems to be a key factor in the popularity of some of these memoirs.

I must say I wondered about "Angela's Ashes" as I read it, thinking it must be greatly exaggerated, written with the "love of blarney...." It almost seems like this sort of book is written deliberately with a Hollywood screenwriter in mind, in future. Likewise "The Glass Castle." How clever of these authors to plan for the movies to be made from their works....

Re Angela's Ashes Is there a belief/idea in the US that McCourt's story is not true? Perhaps you don't have the scale and combination of acute poverty coupled with drunkenness and feckless parenting.
I have an old Irish friend who grew up in County Clare, within a few miles of Limerick in a 'respectable' farming family. She says it was well-known that the behind-the-scenes poverty was there, but never acknowledged.
I have seen children begging "Give us a penny Mister" in the Dublin streets as late as the mid '60's and drunks fighting in Grafton St in the morning (unlike in England where youths wait to fight until the evening).
A friend and I travelled on a train to the Irish Midlands and sat by a friendly priest. As we passed a small town dominated by a huge church he pointed out a school next door. "In an hour's time 800 boys aged 5-11 will come out of that building to go home to dinner and the same number from the girl's school over the road. It is a wonderful thing to see so many children going out into the world." We had no answer.
It is only since the lessening of Church power and with it male dominance in the home leading to a lower birth-rate plus European money-input that we have seen the rise of the Celtic Tiger and the fall of poverty.
Just re-read this and sorry if it seems very po-faced. I loved Angela's Ashes. :-)

I imagine that, as in a lot of memoirs, not everything that happened in McCourt's story happened quite as he said or quite in the order he wrote it...but I must say, I have no real doubt that Angela's Ashes (and the follow-ups) are basically true.

I think that's the difference, isn't it. It's one thing to tell your story and embellish it. The James Herriott books are an extreme case of this - most of the stories happened, but not only are the names changed, but the personalities are significantly changed. It's probably not really reasonable to call the books memoirs - but if he had called them novels, it would have been seriously inaccurate too. But to actually make up a whole background to your life that just didn't happen - especially if you're making up a truly miserable background! - just doesn't seem right.

I have never doubted that Angela's Ashes is basically true-I agree with Martin that embellishment is one thing but totally making up your "memoir" is another. I have always loved reading them but am now becoming hesitant.

This is interesting - it's an article discussing the truth or otherwise of Angela's Ashes; it's on the Limerick website, and there is quite a bit more about the book on the site as well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Angela's Ashes - controversy

The Fake Memoirist's Survival Guide. I like the bits about what to do when caught.

Thanks, Martin, for the Angela's Ashes discussion link. I figure that the more unflattering a memoir is to certain people and places the more skepticism is warranted. On the other hand, Irish writer Alice Taylor has penned a series of gentle remembrances of her hometown that probably will never be questioned, as there is probably no need. I haven't heard or read many disputes bout Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, though it is quite rancorous in a funny way; but perhaps the title itself gives that memoir a clever pass.

disputantum, that advice for the fake memoirist is hilariously intuitive. I didn't know that about Nadine Gordimer fabricating parts of an autobiographical essay. It's ironic that she was outed by her biographer...and then she accused him of breach of trust! I've always thought Gordimer's books are literary snobbery, so that's very rich indeed.