2012 conventions 2012 election 2013 session 2013 special election arts arts and culture author ballot measures basketball bomb books boy scouts budget bullying business charlie hales children clackamas climate change coal college courts crime culture culture club democrats drugs economy education environment family film fluoride food gay rights guns handguns health health care health insurance high school history housing immigration international internet kitzhaber law legislature lgbt literary arts living marijuana marriage media medicine mental health military minor parties mohamed mohamud movies music native americans news newspaper obama olympics oregon our town parenting pers photography police politcs politics port portland portland business journal president prevention public safety religion republicans rnc romney rural salem sam adams sandy hook schools science shooting sports suicide supreme court taxes technology television terrorism theater third parties transportation union university of oregon washington wildfire women

Part of the problem is believability. In the case of the pseudo-memoirs of both James Frey and Margaret Seltzer, the tag of "memoir" permitted the reader to disregard any skepticism at just how unlikely some of the scenarios were--i.e., that a root canal would be performed without anesthetic in the opening chapters of "A Million Little Pieces", or that a white foster child would be placed with a black family in an almost completely black community in "Love and Consequences". What makes these stories compelling _is_ their supposed truthfulness, that such difficult circumstances were faced by a real person who has survived to share their story. Seltzer's publisher told the NYT that she believed the work could have been a successful piece of fiction, but the very premise of the book, the white child in South Central, would likely have been labeled as too far-fetched to be convincing.

We're riveted by stories of suffering and survival, and the attendant media for these much-hyped memoirs feeds our desire to learn more about the REAL author, the REAL sufferer. Hence James Frey appears on Oprah and receives her Book Club nod, and Jones, the reformed gang-banger, opens up her quiet Oregon life to the House and Home section of the NYT. All of this ancillary marketing adds up to a publicity blitz that is almost never present for a work of fiction, except for new work by long-time luminaries. Perhaps Seltzer could have published her work as fiction, but certainly we wouldn't recognize her face or her voice or her house or her child as we now do, thanks to the onslaught of print and radio attention she received.

Fiction tries to avoid the trite and the feel-good; the hackneyed and the unbelievable. I think we could apply these adjectives to much of the ideas in Frey's and Seltzer's work; we forgive them this (as well as unbearable prose, in Frey's case) because if the trite is _true_, how can we impugn it? Instead we feel empathy and amazement; the memoirs allow us to bask in the idea of redemption. In some way, our empathy is not advanced enough to get this emotional pay-off through fiction, or perhaps there is too little fiction vivid enough to provide this emotional release. What's interesting to inspect is why we have this urge to be amazed and awed by genuine human fortitude . . . and the way in which it allows us to stomach such fishy tales.

posted 5 years, 2 months ago
view in context