The reaction to James Frey’s fraudulent memoirs and his subsequent public flogging, conducted by none other than Queen Oprah, was predictable. Josh Getlin, LA Times Staff Writer, in an article entitled Turbulent Year for Books was a Page-Turner, writes:
At Random House, which was stung by the Frey scandal, editors “throughout our more than 100 imprints are asking tougher questions of the agents who bring them nonfiction proposals and their verifiability. . .. If there are serious questions that are not being answered satisfactorily, we’re more than likely to pass on publishing,” spokesman Stuart Applebaum said.
Well, it’s about time. You’d think “verifiability” would already be an integral part of memoir-making. If not, I 
shall start immediately compiling notes from my year-long sabbatical in a Himalayan ice cave, converting Sherpas, battling Yetis, and communing with ascended masters. What I want to know is, when did factual accuracy stop being a part of our life’s story?
However, Getlin goes on to suggest that all the hoopla may be an over-reaction; that innocent authors are now being put through the ringer, unduly grilled by the plagiarism police, and tried for the slightest embellishments. As such, some still come to Frey’s defense. For instance, one editor described his “literary license” as harmless “self-mythography:
To be sure, Frey crossed the line by going on television, in an earlier appearance on the Winfrey show, and claiming that made-up incidents in his memoir were true. But a simple reading of his book would reveal that “this was self-mythography,” said Jonathan Galassi, editor in chief of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, a respected independent publishing house. “If you read it with clear eyes, you couldn’t possibly take this stuff literally. And so in that sense, it wouldn’t really matter if it was true or not.”
Aside from really liking that word — self-mythography — the concept seems at odds with the trend toward “verifiability.” On the one hand, you have agents and editors who are now rigorously fact-checking their clients’ tortured tales. On the other hand, there’s editors who are conceding a world of “falsehood” 
under the heading of personalized myth. At some point, a collision is inevitable.
It’s reflective of a larger struggle in Western culture — a clash between concrete, objective truth and relativism. Canons of experience are nowadays constructed upon the mistaken premise that “all truth is relative,” that what’s true for you is not necessarily true for me. So what if I never went to jail — it felt like I was in one. This is the hole in the dike that eventually allowed authors like James Frey to exaggerate, festoon, disfigure and prettify the facts, all under the heading of “memoir.” And why not? In our age, there’s no more lying — it’s self-mythography.
As I’ve said before, Truth Bites. And with the beast out of the cage, someone’s bound to get hurt.
hey, a whole generation is learning to do this self mythography well. they can be anything they want on My Space, right? they can say they’ve accomplished anything they wish they’d accomplished, give themselves hot bodies, cool images, witty personalities…
Regarding writing, why don’t these people just make it easy and call it fiction?
well said, mike. it is scary when truth is so relative. my mentor always said, “let’s see what the Bible says.” that one, concrete Truth. i drill that into my girls.
I think this a bit of an oversweeping accusation re: the whole “objective” truth (which has never been completely objective) and “relative” truth, especially since most of culture felt deceived and didn’t appreciate his self-mythologization. I completely agree that, as every society, this society has issues. I’m just arguing against too many generalizations that use an extreme (that is rarely held to) as the norm.
Heather, in the context of this post — and specifically, in relation to Frey’s memoirs — objective truth clearly has to do with factual accuracy. Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, all show the man lied. While “moral relativism†and absolutism has more hazy boundaries, the relativism explicit in this debate is the kind that let’s author’s fudge facts. (It’s also the kind that underlies historical revisionism in general.) Perhaps I should have made a distinction between the two. But in the end, it is the same subjectivism, distrust, and re-framing of reality that sustains both. An inability (or reluctance) to “verify†truth claims leads to self-mythography which (potentially) leads to lies. The fact that we are creating terms to justify one’s fabrication / embellishment of history, shows just how pervasive — and detrimental — relativism is.
While these positions may not be “the norm,” in American society at large, they are apparently still held by some in secular publishing and are status quo in many universities. Furthermore, I’d suggest that the germ of the idea is resident in all of us and, coupled with our propensity to lie / deceive / bullshit, we are all little Freys. Thanks for your comments!
Glad I dropped by, Mike. You always have some interesting discussions going. I did an interview a while back with one of the Christian peacemakers who was held hostage in Iraq. He too said that while he would offer up his life to save a child from being murdered, he would not kill to do so.
Well, I’d hate to be the wife or daughter of a man like this! He may have the right to offer his own life in a violent situation but not to forfeit mine. Same with the president.
Also I find that sometimes people are unable to distinguish between violence and force. Yes, there are times when they look the same or have a similar result, but violence is often accompanied by negative emotion, retaliation, rage, hatred. Force is something more neutral. A police officer applying force to arrest someone is not the same as someone losing their temper and attacking you. And the police officer is probably not angry or getting any personal rise out of his task.
Anyway, interesting stuff. And congratulations on your grandchild! Adorable.
Deb
Hey, Deb! I think you intended your comments for my Is Non-Violence Suicidal post. You make a great distinction between “violence” and “force.” Far too often, they’re assumed to be one and the same. Thanks Deb!