Most readers, myself included, expect that the basic facts reported in memoir correlate to observable reality.  Otherwise, we have a novel by another name.

With the help of blogger Gutsy Writer I discovered this Writing Your Life into Story website, one place that tells one of last year’s publishing scandals–the story of Margaret Jones, AKA Selzer, who claimed to be part white, part native American and pulled into the gangs of South LA.  Problem with the story?  Margaret grew up in Sherman Oaks and went to a private school.  Like James Frey, Selzer fictionalized much or most of the story but called it memoir. In an interesting twist, she was “outed” by her sister before the book hit the stores.

I plan to read Carol Bly’s The Passionate Accurate Story, recommended by Barbara Abercrombie, of the Writing Your Life Into Story blog cited above.

I will also catalogue controversies as they pop up on the scene.  By now, editors and publishers must be careful to ask for documentation for memoir.

But the question remains, what does it say about our culture, and about the publishing industry that writers make up stories worse than their own and then claim them to be true?  It used to be that people lied to inflate their resumes, and in business they are still doing so.  When novels ruled the publishing world, we did not have this problem.  Memoirs (note the s) were still written by ex-presidents and CEOs, and very few people without huge name recognition expected to publish the stories of their lives.

Is the issue as simple as the rush to a trend (everyone trying to outdo Frank McCourt of Angela’s Ashes for misery?). Or is something even deeper at work in our collective psyches?

What do you think?

But this week I am going home to see most of my siblings and my mother.  I will be carrying a story that won first place in the Kalamazoo Gazette Literary Award competition and was published in a special literary edition on March 29, 2009.  It’s called “My Mother’s Pulpit,” and you can read it here.  I chose not to tell my mother about this story or to send a copy to her.  I want to deliver it to her in print and read it to her in person.  I think, hope, pray she will love it and see it for what it is–a tribute to her indomitable spirit.

But since the story reveals that she embarrassed me, like most mothers do to most daughters at some point, I am a little nervous about her reaction.

Some memoir writers have written about this dilemma.  Annie Dillard shares her work with family members in advance of publication.  Jeanette Walls, in The Glass Castle, amazingly, has the full support of her mother in telling the story of how she became Park Avenue daughter who has a baglady mother.

Other writers, such as Augusten Burroughs in Running with Scissors, however, have been sued by family members or friends or have become estranged from them because their versions of the truth clash, or they simply don’t want the family dirty laundry put on the line.

Truman Capote alienated nearly every friend he had left after the publication of Answered Prayers. No amount of fame or literary achievement would be worth that to me.

Another way, oddly enough, that friends and relatives can take offense results from not mentioning them. Memoir writers probably ought to place gargoyles on their houses to protect themselves from all potential hazards of the calling.

I take comfort in the case of the residents of Willa Cather’s hometown of Red Cloud, Nebraska, which at first did not like the way she portrayed them in her stories and novels.  Now Red Cloud proudly displays itself as the place that fostered Cather’s imagination, and the economy of the whole town is heavily dependent on the devoted pilgrims who come to visit the places she described in book after book.

I am hoping that Mother, who gave all her children a love of stories, will understand both my motive and my structure and characterization in the recently published story. I have counted on her unconditional love all my life, and I know I can count on it one more time.  She plays the same role in my memories of childhood that she played in all the war-time Manheim Township High School dramas–leading lady.

Do any of you have advice for me?  Personal experiences to offer?

Here is one writer’s analysis of sexism in memoir review and publishing: http://jenniferweiner.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-was-watching-30-rock-where.html

Does she convince you?  I did not read any of the memoirs reviewed here, so I can’t weigh in, but I find the thesis believable.

The latest scandal surrounds the canceled publication of a memoir that is more fiction than fact.  The author of the book, Herman Rosenblat, apparently wanted to inspire people with a love story about the Holocaust.  Instead, he has angered many who say that this kind of work exploits the Holocaust and encourages the deniers.  I won’t repeat details myself but here are two Huffington Post posts written by Hillel Italie. Be sure to read the comments.

Here is the second one also:

The issues raised by the handful of scandals, ever since the infamous James Frey case, boil down to this:  why don’t people just call their stories novels?  What advantage do they hope to gain by portraying the work as memoir?  And just how strict are the rules around “the truth”?  Obviously, people don’t remember dialogue word for word, yet many memoirs include long stretches of dialogue.

What role is the publishing industry playing in the development of these scandals?  Does the need to have a platform or “backstory” now mean more than good writing to editors and publishers?  People blame Oprah and agents and editors for being duped.  But why do writers create melodramatic stories, perfectly acceptable in fiction, yet try to pass them off as historical truth?  Has postmodernism cheapened the idea of truth and enlarged the idea of the self so much that writers cannot tell the difference?

My husband Stuart has an uncle who one time asked him question, “Is that truth or is it poetry?”  We adopted this question and often ask it in jest.  But it actually seems to be a relevant question today.

How much poetic license can a writer take and still call the work a memoir?  What do you think?