Made-up Memoirs, or, Who Cares?
Not even a week after gushing about author Margaret B. Jones and her bungalow in Oregon, the New York Times joins the chorus of shocked! shocked! observers when the author confesses that her would-be hipster literary masterpiece about gang life in South Central L.A. is, like, a novel. You know, like, fiction.
There's a bunch of furious commentary. It reminds me of the indignation that the unveiling of JT LeRoy provoked: you mean that all that writing we praised for its beauty, craft, and grace wasn't about the author's actual life after all? Well, take back everything we said then! Yeah, come back when you're authentically fucked up and we can get vicarious thrills reading about it!
I don't read these kinds of books, and don't understand their appeal. So I have to ask everyone else: why should it matter that Margaret B. Jones is really goody-two-shoes Margaret Seltzer? Actually, isn't it even more impressive that somebody not in the life can write so convincingly about it?
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