As a guy who recently wrote a memoir, I can't tell you how depressing it is to see the genre basically become a magnet for liars--and then to see those liars rewarded with coverage in the New York Times. Call me conflicted, but just spell my name right. Perhaps the worst part is that memoirists who defraud their readers don't even get that much out of it. I mean, you may get book-level fame and book-level money, but dude, it's still book level. If you're going to defraud somebody do it the right way--go get an MBA, work on Wall Street and steal some real money.
Oh, that hurt. Sorry friends, I promise, no more fat-cat bashing.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Might i offer that one deeper issue at work here is that in an age of lies, our society has confused "Real" with "True"? In other words that since there's so little that we can trust around us, especailly from our government, we want more and more truth, but instead of going for the deep truths of art (both fictional and nonfictional) we demand "the true story". As a result, there's a lot of really good semi-autobiographical novels (or just completely ficitonal ones) being passed off as memoirs, because that's the only way their authors can sell them.
I'm not trying to excuse the act of fraud, or to say that the authors shouldn't be punished for their individual choice or whatever, but rather just understand culturally what the heck is going on.
I actually wrote a column about this which can be found here:
http://www.buzzine.com/2008/06/give-us-your-truth/
Posted by isaac | July 24, 2008 12:57 PM