So True

Love and Consequences, the memoir of a girl growing up with gangs in South LA, was written by Margaret B. Jones and published by Penguin last week to good reviews.

Yesterday it was revealed that Ms. Jones is not an Native American-Caucasian who was raised by an African American foster mother. In fact, Ms. Jones is Ms. Seltzer, a 33-year old creative writing student who attended a private school in Valley.

Ms. Seltzer's outing is good timing in the sense that it follows on the heels of Misha Deonseca's confession that her childhood Holocaust memoir, Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years, was made up. Hey, Seltzer might have lied about black gang members but at least she didn't try to capitalize on the Holocaust!

Ms. Seltzer's outing is also bad timing in the sense that the American media is already obsessed with a certain white women supposedly spreading false narratives about a black man (cough, Hillary, cough Muslim rumours). Do we need further fodder for the mass media's barely concealed contempt for us white girls?

For years readers have been enamoured with true tales of hardship and overcoming. The bloggers at Jezebel have put together a great summary of the cultural phenomenon.

Over at the LA Times, Tim Rutten has chosen to consider the recent flush of fake memoirs and blames not the under-funded publishing industry but rather the narcissistic tendencies of American culture that promotes an ever-increasing appetite for stories of victimhood.

In fact, if you flip through the channels these days, all you'll find is victims; the bread and butter of successful franchises like Law and Order and CSI is the endless variations of abuse that can be affected against a human. Perhaps our cultural obsession with forensics is not about science or the gross-out factor of a cadaver's ribs being peeled open but rather our growing unease borne from our fear that the only authentic experience we will ever know is the one that will kill us.