From the Los Angeles Times
Bogus memoir sparks criticism of publishing industry
Observers call for more caution and fact checking. Others note a history of white artists appropriating the experiences of racial minorities.
By Scott Timberg and Josh Getlin
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 5, 2008
The day after the publishing world reeled from revelations of yet another faked memoir, this one from a supposed mixed-race former drug-running foster child from South-Central Los Angeles who turned out to have been raised by her white biological family in Sherman Oaks, those involved with the book's publication tried to explain how they fell for the deception.
Others debated whether the book world's credulous ways are in dire need of an overhaul.
Still others focused on the racial subtext of the story. Margaret B. Jones' "Love and Consequences," as many pointed out, is a familiar case of a white writer, abetted by the majority-white New York-based publishing community, appropriating the story of an oppressed minority far from Manhattan.
FOR THE RECORD:
Faked memoir: In an article in Wednesday's Section A about reaction to the news that the Margaret B. Jones book "Love and Consequences" was a fraud, Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum's last name was misspelled as Appelbaum. —
"Love and Consequences" tells the story of a part Native American L.A. girl who is sent to foster care after being sexually abused, falls in with the Bloods street gang, receives a gun for her 14th birthday, and is finally rescued by a stressed-out but big-hearted black foster mother called Big Mom.
In reality, Margaret B. Jones is Margaret Seltzer, who got to know gang members through her work with the Brother/SisterHood Foundation. Her deception was revealed by her sister, Cyndi Hoffman, who called the book's publisher, Riverhead, after a profile of the author, with photograph, ran in the New York Times' House and Home section.
Today Riverhead, a division of Penguin Books, recalled the memoir, canceled the author's appearances and offered an apology.
"Riverhead relies on authors to tell us the truth," Marilyn Ducksworth, executive director of publicity, said in a statement. "Indeed, an author promises us the truth in their publishing agreement. When it became known that the author was misrepresenting her personal story, we took it seriously, moved very quickly and attempted to corroborate new information we were presented with."
Still, the publisher defended its original faith in the book, saying Seltzer had provided "a great deal of evidence to support her story: photographs, letters; parts of Peggy's life story in another published book; Peggy's story had been supported by one of her former professors; Peggy even introduced the agent to people who misrepresented themselves as her foster siblings."
Perhaps not surprisingly, Stuart Appelbaum, spokesman for Random House, which two years ago published James Frey's partly fabricated addiction memoir "A Million Little Pieces," was sympathetic. Appelbaum said Riverhead's competitors were not pointing fingers or gloating.
"It could happen to any of us, no matter how sophisticated or experienced we are," he said. "This woman in California seemed particularly engaged in her deception. She apparently had documentation of her own, so unless you're prepared to do an incredible reference check, things will slip through."
Others in the publishing industry said that, by now, these kinds of deceptions should be ferreted out sooner.
James Atlas, publisher of Atlas Books, said it was time for a fundamental change in how nonfiction books are vetted for accuracy.
"I wouldn't feel comfortable taking on a memoir where I had to just rely on the writer's say so," Atlas said. "It's a tremendous expense to have fact checkers. But I still think some investment has to be made in fact checking."
Outside the publishing industry, as well, there seemed to be little sympathy for Riverhead. The story percolated in the blogosphere, with most posters apparently skeptical of publishers' claims that this kind of deception is unavoidable. Asked blogger Kevin Allman: "Were any actual black people involved in the publication of this book?"
Sarah McGrath, the book's editor, and agent Faye Bender did not respond to requests for comment.
Sara Nelson, editor of Publishers Weekly, said Bender should take a larger share of the blame. "The agent is the person who represents the author in the sale of this, and very often these days agents do more than simply hand off a book. They do a lot of editing of the manuscript and the proposal; they do a lot of working with the writer."
To still others, it's a story about the press, which also bought into Seltzer's story, although her hometown paper, the Register-Guard of Eugene, Ore., postponed a planned profile when it found that she had not graduated from the University of Oregon, as she claimed.
The book itself was available for only four days, noted Michael Cader, publisher of the Publisher's Marketplace website. "I'd guess that exponentially more people read the author's lies as independently presented by the journalists at the New York Times last Thursday than those in her book," Cader said. "While Riverhead is understandably upset both at the wasted effort and the fraud perpetrated on them, the impact of this bogus book on readers and purchasers is minimal."
Many others throughout the day noted that South-Central L.A., where the events in the book take place, is worlds away from the New York-based publishing industry. McGrath, the book's editor, never met Seltzer in person.
The lack of personal contact was a mistake that made the publisher vulnerable, many said.
"It seems to me that if this young woman sat in front of me and worked every day with me for three years, I'd have an awful lot of questions," said Nelson of Publishers Weekly. "How does this apparently normal middle-class person live through such a horrible thing and seem to have no scars from it? I'd like to think if I were the editor, I would have asked harder questions, and I would have kept asking them."
James Fugate, who co-owns the African American-focused Eso Won Books in Leimert Park, where Jones was scheduled to appear Friday, said he was not sure whether his customers would have come to her reading.
Publishers, he said, "look at books like this and think they are going to be very popular. But it's not going to be the urban audience. It's going to be suburban kids who are going to be 'down with the Bloods.' She was going to be the next Eminem!"
Jones/Seltzer, who claimed to be half Native American and often lapses in the book into the inner-city black vernacular of "hoods," "homies" and "ima make sure," is part of a long tradition of white artists impersonating or borrowing the voices and experiences of racial minorities, experts said.
In music it goes back to minstrelsy; in the novel and memoir the examples are generally more recent, said Richard Yarborough, English professor at UCLA.
"The first person who comes to mind is Danny Santiago," he said of the author of "Famous All Over Town," a supposed Latino writing about life in East L.A. (He turned out to be a white screenwriter.)
"There's a long American tradition of fake ethnic autobiographies that goes back to fake slave narratives in the 1840s," said Laura Browder, associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of "Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities."
"I think some of the authors of these memoirs have pain and suffering they don't know how to name, so they attach them to something that's universally associated with suffering," like race.
Said black L.A. novelist Gary Phillips, "We know if it were a black girl, that's not exotic, that's just another story from the hood. That's not sexy. There is no movie."
In the promotional material sent out with the book, Jones/Seltzer emphasized her reluctance to exploit her mean-streets upbringing. When a friend of her professor wanted to interview her, she said no. "I wasn't interested in the whole 'South-Central-as-petting-zoo-thing.' Then my home girl said the teacher might mess me around and fail me."
At the end of the book she thanks a host of old friends, including "the homie Swift; T-Bone; D. Will," and others "without whose love and support I would be completely lost in this life."
Times staff writer Lynell George contributed to this report.
