![]() ![]() ![]() "It seems like deception."Ĭlark questions whether the book should be called a memoir at all. "It seems like dishonesty to me,' Clark said. ![]() "Yet, nowhere in the book is the reader warned that Burroughs may have dreamed up the whole scene. It never happened.Īnd "Angel at the Fence" a Holocaust love story that was supposed to be released this February, was cancelled when it turned out to be made up. In "Love and Consequences," Margaret Seltzer told the story of running drugs for a Los Angeles gang. Worse, said Clark, is that some memoirs turn out to be complete fiction. "They're taking several events and bringing them into a single moment, or they're making believe a character in their story is one character, when it is really a composite of several. "People are inventing conversations that they know didn't happen," Clark said. In a humiliating interview with Oprah Winfrey last year, writer James Frey was forced to admit he had embellished his past struggle with drugs in his bestselling "A Million Little Pieces." "And so there's a tremendous temptation, among authors, among agents, among publishers to make the story interesting as - sometimes as lurid as - possible."Īnd if the story isn't lurid enough, said Clark, some writers are willing to spice up the truth. "They generate millions upon millions of dollars," said Roy Peter Clark, who teaches writing at the Poynter Institute in St. ![]()
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