Coming next fall: The memoirs of Uncle John, in which he describes his colorful past—training elephants in Antarctica, flying biplanes for the Secret Service, and negotiating a peace treaty between the Klingons and Crutons on Uranus. Who cares if it’s not all true? It should make for great bathroom reading!
MAKING IT UP AS YOU GO
Most successful memoirs are written by people who are already famous—that’s why their books sell well—and while the stories might sometimes stretch the truth a bit, you can be reasonably certain that they’re mostly accurate. But in recent years, a new type of book has infiltrated the publishing industry: totally made-up memoirs written by authors known to almost no one, who become famous only because their books become famous. Probably the best-known example is A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey. For years he tried to sell a story of drug abuse, crime, and redemption as a novel, but no publisher was interested in it. In 2003 he finally got publishing powerhouse Doubleday to release it—as a memoir—and it became a national sensation, selling millions of copies. Frey’s rise and subsequent fall on The Oprah Winfrey Show is fairly well known, but there have been several other fake memoirs with far more fantastic claims than Frey’s. Here are a few of the most outrageous “memoirists.”
MEMOIR: Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan, by Norma Khouri (2003)
WHAT SHE WROTE: Khouri and her best friend Dalia owned a hair salon in Amman, Jordan, in the 1990s. After Dalia fell in love with a Christian soldier, she was stabbed to death by her Muslim father in an “honor killing.” Khouri was forced to flee the country, first to Greece, then to Australia, and wrote her memoir in Internet cafés whenever she could. When Honor Lost became a bestseller in Australia, Khouri was subjected to threats against her life and had to go into hiding. The book quickly became an international success, and Khouri became a symbol of independence and courage for oppressed women throughout the Arab world.
At the same time? 17% of drivers pick their noses in the car, and 17% flirt with other drivers.
THE TRUTH: In July 2004, the Sydney Morning Herald exposed Khouri as a fake. She was born in Jordan—but her family moved away when she was three years old. She was raised in Chicago, where she lived for nearly 30 years. During the 1990s, Khouri and her American husband, John Toliopoulos, were reportedly involved in several shady real estate deals in Chicago, and in 1999, after being questioned by the FBI, they moved to Australia. She never owned a hair salon in Jordan, and there was no proof that “Dalia” ever existed. Khouri initially stood by the book, then in August 2004 admitted that most of it was made up. She defended it anyway, saying it was for a good cause. Honor Lost had sold half a million copies in 15 countries by the time the hoax was revealed.
MEMOIR: The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams, by Nasdijj (2000)
WHAT HE WROTE: Nasdijj (pronounced NAS-de-gee) was born on a Navajo reservation to an alcoholic Indian mother who died young, and a white father who abused him. He eventually got married, had a daughter, then adopted a young boy who suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. At the age of six, the boy died in Nasdijj’s arms. A section of the story was published in Esquire magazine in 1999, and the piece was nominated for a National Magazine Award. The full-length memoir followed, to wide critical acclaim, making the New York Times Notable Book list and winning the Salon.com Book Award. Nasdijj went on to write two more memoirs—both of them also critical successes.
THE TRUTH: In 2006 the alternative news magazine LA Weekly published a story, titled “Navahoax,” that provided proof that Nasdijj was actually a white writer of gay erotica from East Lansing, Michigan, named Timothy Patrick Barrus. The entire story of Nasdijj the Navajo had been made up. Barrus lost a lucrative publishing contract and currently writes angry diatribes about the publishing industry on various Internet sites.
MEMOIR: Love and Consequences, by Margaret B. Jones (2008)
WHAT SHE WROTE: Half white and half American Indian, Jones was removed from her childhood home after being sexually abused by a relative. At the age of eight, she landed in a foster family in South Central, a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Los Angeles. There, she was raised by a black woman known as “Big Mom,” whose grandchildren became Jones’s foster brothers and sisters. By the time she was a young teenager, she had joined the “Bloods” street gang, started doing drugs and making crack cocaine, and witnessed one of her foster brothers gunned down in front of their house. Jones finally escaped that life, attended the University of Oregon, graduated with a degree in ethnic studies, and sold her fascinating story to Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin.
In May 1996, a tornado hit an Ontario, Canada, drive-in theater. Movie showing that night: Twister.
THE TRUTH: In February 2008, a week before its official release, Love and Consequences received a rave review in The New York Times. Alongside the review ran a photo of Jones. A woman named Cyndi Hoffman saw it and called the publisher…and said the story was all fake. How did she know? She was Jones’s older sister. And the author’s name wasn’t Jones; it was Seltzer, and she grew up in an upper-middle-class home in Sherman Oaks, California (where she went to the same private school as the Olsen twins). The publisher questioned Jones/Seltzer, and she eventually admitted that the entire story was made up. She said she was doing a good deed. “I thought it was my opportunity,” she tearfully told the Times, “to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to.” The 19,000 copies of the book that had already gone out to stores were recalled, and full refunds were given to people who had pre-ordered it. Seltzer has not been published since (we think).
MEMOIR: Angel at the Fence, by Herman Rosenblat (scheduled for publication in February 2009)
WHAT HE WROTE: During World War II, Rosenblat was interned at Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. One day in 1944 a young girl named Roma approached him from outside the fence—and threw him an apple. She was Jewish, but was posing as Christian with the help of a family that lived nearby. For the next seven months, the girl came to the spot regularly to sneak the boy food. Years later, in 1957, while living in Brooklyn, New York, Rosenblat went on a blind date…and his date turned out to be Roma. They fell in love and got married. The story appeared in numerous magazines over the years.
THE TRUTH: Several Holocaust scholars and Buchenwald experts pointed out that the story couldn’t be true. For starters, there was no way anyone, much less a child, could have freely approached the fence surrounding the camp. And the spot where Roma supposedly waited outside would have been right next to an SS barracks. Also, Roma was supposedly being hidden by a Christian family near the camp. If that had been true, it’s unlikely that she would have left her hiding place…to stand outside of a concentration camp. The truth was that Rosenblat really did survive Buchenwald, and Roma really was hidden by a Christian family—200 miles from the camp; they never met in Germany. In late 2008, under pressure from the press and the publisher, Rosenblat admitted he made up the love story. “I wanted to bring happiness to people,” he said. “My motivation was to make good in this world.” The publication of Angel at the Fence was immediately cancelled.
President Obama is distantly related to both Brad Pitt and Wild Bill Hickok.
Freyed again: Before the hoax was uncovered, the couple appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show twice. Oprah called the book the “greatest love story ever told on this show.”
MEMOIR: Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years, by Misha DeFonseca (1997)
WHAT SHE WROTE: When her parents were taken to Auschwitz by the Nazis in 1941, seven-year-old Misha left Brussels, Belgium, to search for them. Over the next four years, she traveled 1,900 miles, during which time she fought with resistance groups, wandered in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto, killed a Nazi soldier with a pocketknife, and, most amazingly, was fed and protected for a time by a pack of wolves. The book was first published in the U.S., didn’t do well, but later became a bestseller in Europe. It even inspired an Italian opera and a French film.
THE TRUTH: Like Angel at the Fence, the book drew the suspicion of Holocaust historians from the start. In 2008, after an investigation by a Belgian newspaper, Misha DeFonseca finally confessed: Her name was Monique De Wael, and while her parents were in fact taken away by the Nazis, they were members of the Belgian Resistance—and not Jews, but Catholics. And she never went looking for them, but had spent the war years with her grandfather in Brussels. After admitting her deception, Defonseca said she had always “felt Jewish.” And, she added, “The story in the book is mine. It is not the actual reality—it was my reality. I had been telling my story for years and believed it to be true.”
Tip tip: Studies show that tips increase by 18% when a waitress draws a happy face on the check.