Book Controversies: Fake Memoirs

When it comes to books, there are some that create controversies.  Book challenging is when people believe a book should be removed from public places.  Multiple books have been challenged, like George Orwell's Animal Farm and Jack London's Call of the Wild.  Book censorship is when people believe a book to be objectionable or offensive, like J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.  Banned books are books that have been prohibited by law, like Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham in China and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in South Africa (Wikipedia, 2016).  What is amazing is most of these books have been read in school.

Many controversies can come from novels, but I am going to focus on Fake Memoirs.  "Fake memoirs form a category of literary forgery in which a wholly or partially fabricated autobiography, memoir, or journal of an individual is presented as fact. In some cases, the purported author of the work is also a fabrication" (Wikipedia, 2016).  Usually these are books that seem like they actually happen, but there have been reports of actual fakeness within these books.  Some of them have even been awarded or appeared on television shows before they were proven to be forged.  One fake memoir I can recall is James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, which tells about "his" drug addiction and recovery.  I can remember it being shown on Oprah's show and being included in her book club as well as Oprah questioning him about its authenticity on her live show.  "The Washington Post's Richard Cohen was so impressed by the confrontation that he crowned Winfrey "Mensch of the Year" (2016).  [Mensch means "'a person of integrity and honor'" (Wikipedia, 2015).] 

Another fake memoir is Helen Darville's (or Helen Demidenko) The Hand That Signed the Paper, which "was presented as a supposedly autobiographical story of a student’s discovery of her family's bleak wartime history as peasants in Ukraine under Stalinism and their 'liberation' by the Nazi invasion" but the truth was she had no Ukrainian ancestors or family members (2016).  It was seen as really great book by the Australian people, at least until its revelation. "The deception was revealed by the Australian media when the novel won the Miles Franklin Award; it later won the 1995 Australian Literary Society Gold Medal" (2016).

It is amazing how such great books can turn out to be fictionalized.  This is just my opinion, but if you are going to fake a memoir, do not claim it is real and lie about it because sooner or later, the truth will be revealed and you will be hit hard by readers and fans.  There is nothing wrong with stating your work is fiction or that it contains some personal experiences.  James Frey faked his book and he was criticized on Oprah's show and Helen Darville was criticized when she won the Miles Franklin Award.  "As a result of the recent series of best selling memoirs having been outed for falsification, there have been calls for stronger vetting and fact checking of an author's material" (2016).  This is a good thing because no one wants to read a great book and later find out it was a work of fiction.  No one wants to be deceived by a book.

References:
Fake Memoirs.  Wikipedia.  Retrieved February 24, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_memoirs
List of books banned by governments.  Wikipedia.  Retrieved February 24, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments
Mensch.  Wikipedia.  Retrieved February 24, 2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch