Margaret Jones' Diaries: today in Liarland

•  The New York Times prints a few letters to the editor about the topic under the heading "Her So-Called Life (Fact-Checking Required)". Interestingly, all four letters chosen have to do with Margaret Jones' publisher doing all the fact-checking, and not the Times....

• Nancy Rommelmann has a marvelous essay on LA Observed, musing about whether the fiasco could be chalked up to provincialism in the New York publishing world. Nancy's conclusion nails it:

Nan A. Talese, who published the sine qua non of the genre, James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, doesn’t like the idea of double-checking an author. “I don’t think there is any way you can fact-check every single book,” she told the Times. “It would be very insulting and divisive in the author-editor relationship.”

Funny, I’ve never been insulted when asked by an editor to check facts, but anyway, this is not really about fact checking; I don’t personally care if someone writes he ate a Pink’s hot dog with grilled onions in March, when actually it was a chili dog in May. What I care about is that the writer – of fiction or memoir – is telling the truth as best he or she can, and I think this is what editors care about, too, or should. Those in New York who do, in fact, wield so much influence; who have such a vast range of culture to choose from and to disseminate, need to have the guts and aptitude to admit, they might not know enough about a subject or region to know whether what they’re reading is the truth, and then, summon the curiosity to find out.

Indeed. But, then again, the publishing industry is so solipsistic that the Los Angeles Times even holds its own announcement ceremony for the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes in...New York. Would it hurt the publishers to put a few junior editors on a jetBlue and send them out to L.A. for a night at the Standard? Apparently so, suggests LAT book editor David Ulin:

As to why this is important, well ... like any small, insular industry, publishing can have a very narrow vision; it can be difficult to see outside the fishbowl of New York. You can bemoan this, or you can deal with it, but either way, that’s how it is. If the mountain won’t come to you, in other words, you have to go tell it on the mountain, which is why we announce the Book Prize nominations in New York.

• Kate Coe at Mediabistro's Fishbowl LA is all over it, too...and Kate knows from literary fabulists, having written the definitive article dissecting the Theresa Duncan affair....

• Galleycat has an interesting email from an anonymous book reviewer who was assigned Love and Consequences. The correspondent doesn't think that it's a reviewer's job to vet memoirs except in cases of egregious claims, and I agree.

• Last: where are the Oregon media on this tale of a Eugene writer taking the New York publishing and newspaper worlds for a ride? Jeff Baker, book editor of The Oregonian, had a good summary piece that the O wisely ran on its front page. The Eugene Register-Guard revealed that it spiked a profile of the liar when it discovered that she'd lied about her educational bona fides (which, it should be noted, is far more due diligence than The New York Times exercised).

Willamette Week ran a blog item. So did the Eugene Weekly. And the Portland Mercury made it clear that they "don’t happen to give a shit if memoirs are “true” or not," which says volumes about both the quality of their arts coverage and their editors' curiosity about anything more than a mile off E. Burnside Avenue.

Is that going to be it? I hope not, particularly given Jones' connection to the eco-saboteur Jeffrey "Free" Luers, and the news this week that he may be released from prison as early as next year after the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned his original 22-year sentence. Since the gang-outreach workers in South Central L.A. have no idea who the hell Margaret Jones is, wouldn't exploring her connections in the Oregon eco-underground be a more fertile field of inquiry?

Comments

[nishani frazier]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/books/04fake.html?ref=books&pagewanted=all

(sorry this is long, but i have to say it) I knew that story didnt sound right from the get-up. At the heart of this story is a telling revelation about how the view of black folk as the "other" engenders the ABSURD when it comes to perceptions about life in the black community.

For entertainment sake, I thought I would note a couple of reasons why anybody black would have known this story was bull shit:

1. Its Big mama , not big mom. Also well known terms in the black community include Ma-dear, mama-dear, Big ma (not used that often).

2. black women in the ghetto are not given white foster children - black foster children yes....because that's how "you people" live.....but not white foster children.

3. No child or teenager knows enough to buy a burial plot once you started running drugs. Instead, black children do what any group of children at that age would do with lots of money, and no savings account, 401K, or stock broker. They buy clothes, jewelry, electronics...I'm supposed to believe that the KEEN awareness of one young white girl about "ghetto life", led her to buy a burial plot...and that everybody else didnt bother? (p.s. I'm sure this story is chock full of details like this which illuminate how even in the face of being raised by "the other" - she was the exception- afterall, she was white. Which is why the publishers latched on to her like hungry leeches)

4.) If she lived in a black community, what funeral home director in the black community would accept money from a child for their own burial plot without letting "big mom" know?

5.) Not every black person cooks with pork or knows how to make buttermilk cornbread from scratch without measurement...which I'm sure is much to the shock of white america -- or atleast the NY Times writer who was so impressed. p.s. I know white women who can cook buttermilk cornbread without measurement. If you're that impressed, I'll pass their info along.

6.) She claims that she got a lot of this information while talking to kids, black panthers at starbucks- As a historian and a black person--- what kids are black panthers? Typical "other" observation...gangs, 1960s political organizations (black panthers), NAACP (my own personal throw in since she cant tell the difference)...same thing...whatever.

7.) These gangs/black panthers can be seen in their natural habitat--------Starbucks. No doubt before a day of drive-bys, they stop to get their lattes first.

and 8.) my favorite: You want me to believe that in order to verify your "hardcore" status to the publisher, you got what amounted to a recommendation letter from a gang leader.....lmao

The building blocks of racism are notions of exclusion and perceptions of people of different races as "the other". Thus all these folks can participate in the absurd formulations of black life in LA through a white girl's eyes who "lived the life" WITHOUT asking the questions which many black people would find obvious to ask....mostly because her story is just so damn stupid. Where were the black people? No where...not among the critics, not among the journalists, not among the publishing house...and most importantly people---- NOT in that book she wrote.

p.s. Finally, on a personal note. What kind of jacked up sister do you have, that she would blow up your spot like that? You cant call your sister before you decide to call the NY TImes?

[Jil McIntosh]

So did anyone actually see this "pit bull tattoo" on the esteemed author?

[nancy]

What Nishani said.
I'm seven pages into "Love and Consequences" and it's just jaw-droppingly... wrong. As in, one of the Blood's biggest and most successful OGs would spent a lot of time with an 8-year-old white foster girl, explaining the history of the Bloods; more, that he would say to her, "Be true to the game, live by her rules, and she will always bless you." And then, when said white girl was 12, would give her a "job" wherein she was responsible for checking out prospective drug buyers to make sure they weren't cops. 'Cuz, you know, the best person to do this is a white little girl. It's delusional. Also, the writing is pure writing-degree writing. It's fine, it moves, but there is zero soul. Then again, maybe I need to wait for the parts where people say, "Fo sho" and "Aiight homie."

[Kate]

No one knows if the sister called Peggy first. It's possible that the family is used to her spinning tall tales.