Margaret Jones' Diaries: the eco-saboteur connection

Congratulations to Steve Huff, who seems to have uncovered a small Margaret Jones/Peggy Seltzer motherlode: a journal begun by the author of Love or Consequences in 2004, then abandoned until she posted one entry in early 2005...the very timeframe when she signed her contract with Riverhead Books.

It goes back to my original question: Were any actual black people involved in the publication of this book?

It's more relevant than ever -- because the Jones/Seltzer diary of 2004 has all the black-street versimilitude of one of those 17-year-old white kids who pull up next to you at a stoplight in their mother's Toyota Prius, blasting Pimp-C out the windows. Only this "kid" was a white woman in her late twenties, who was about to launch an easily disprovable hoax that would ultimately fool a prominent New York publisher and The New York Times itself:

some people would be suprised to find out where and how i grew up. the fact is who i am bekomes exceedingly unimportant. what does matter is what i kan bring to the table....

im jus a gurl...a simple one at that. i was a soldier once, but i think i am semi-retired now. dont doubt that i am doing my work still, only what that work is has changed and as someone told me once, "u are not a soldier unless u are in a war". these days im enjoyin my peace, fillin my head an hopin an pushin toward big things.

Edukation. im not talkin that white washed BS, but truth. we all need to fill our heads with something other than what is shoved at us and oviousally not workin. we need to start understandin the struggle that we are left in and how it has evolved so we understand what we do and why.

Even more weird: it seems that in 2001, Margaret Jones/Peggy Seltzer, who at that time was using the AOL handle "blastedagronaut," was involved in the effort to free the eco-saboteur Jeffrey "Free" Luers, who was convicted in 2000 of torching three SUVs in Jones/Seltzer's adopted hometown of Eugene, Ore.

In a bulletin dated Aug. 2001, A-Infos, a news website for self-described anarchists, lists Jones/Seltzer's email address as a contact in the effort to reduce or commute Luers' sentence:

I'd suggest that anyone trying to get to the truth of who Margaret Jones/Peggy Seltzer may really be might want to stop concentrating on South Central L.A. and the private schools of the San Fernando Valley...and start checking around the eco-communities of Eugene, Ore.

Comments

Thanks for the mention, Kevin. I'm virtually certain "blastedagronaut" is her, where ever you find that screen name. I couldn't really fit that into what I wrote for Radar, but not for lack of trying.

Damned hard story to ignore, ain't it?

[Steve Huff]

Don't know why my name didn't print above, but that comment was from me, Kevin. Once again, I appreciate the nod!

Steve Huff

[Lyn LeJeune]

Well, the author is simply a liar, but the whole issue is really how the publishing "industry" works, and now the agents, et al are claiming they were duped. How much were they blinded by their own need for fame and fortune and rejecting other very good writers? They seemed to have spent so much time on this one book and what they would get out of it (money????Oprah time?) they were blinded by the truth. I was even suspicious when I read the articles in the NYT - sometimes things just don't ring true and the reader sees that. Perhaps agents/publishers should let a few seasoned readers help them out - kind of like a focus reading group!
Lyn LeJeune-Rebuilding the public libraries of New Orleans at www.beatitudesinneworleans.blogspot.com. All royalties from the sale of The Beatitdues (fiction!!) goes to NOLA libraries.

[Esther]

This whole story is just so amazing yet so predictable. It seems to happen time and time again. You'd think a major publishing house would be able to vet these things before they found their way into print. The sad thing is, there are probably real people out there with authentic stories who will never get heard. What gave this woman the right to steal someone else's life experience, one she didn't live, and pawn it off as her own? How incredibly arrogant.

[ExpatJane]

There are so many twists and turns in this Seltzer story that I'm starting to get motion sick.

Interesting angle with this "blastedagronaut" handle. However, I'm only pulling up a couple of results when I search for it.