2 days ago If you missed it, check out my recent list of the best fiction books I’ve read over the past few months, too. I like to switch it up, sometimes reading for fun (usually fiction books), and sometimes reading non-fiction books or memoirs to educate myself/learn about the world. But non-fiction can also be just as entertaining as fiction books! Fiction writers have complete license to keep only the best tidbits of the story. Even memoirs can benefit from a little cutting. Keeping only the juiciest bits and tossing the less-than-interesting parts into the compost is a smart way to use a piece of truth to its full fictional advantage. A memoir typically covers one aspect of a writer’s life (or a continuous theme through memories), while an autobiography is a chronological account of the writer’s life. For example, Nadine’s memoir touches on many parts of her life, but the core focus is to help addicts and those with several life struggles get back on their feet. (shelved 1 time as fictional-memoir) avg rating 3.98 — 128,830 ratings — published 2018 Want to Read saving.
Telling the unvarnished truth in an autobiography or memoir is no small feat. The urge to slip in embellishments or heighten a dramatic arc through exaggeration can be hard to resist, especially when aiming for a compelling life story. But the past few decades have seen an increase in an entirely different category of memoir—the hoax, where the truth, if it’s even present, is of little consequence. Here are five stunning examples of literary fraud.
1. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
The 19th-century American humorist Josh Billings once said “There are some people who are so addicted to exaggeration that they can’t tell the truth without lying” His observation might well have described writer James Frey, who fabricated large parts of his so-called memoir, A Million Little Pieces, a gritty account of his struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. Though to be fair Frey had presented the book initially as a novel, publishers only developed interest in it after it was described as a true story, looking to meet the reading public’s hunger for hard-luck memoirs.
The 2003 memoir became a huge bestseller after Oprah Winfrey selected it for her TV show book club in 2005, but quickly turned into a major literary scandal that next year. As allegations grew about its many inventions and falsifications (Frey claimed he had spent 87 days in jail when he had been imprisoned for only a few hours), Oprah had the writer back on the show to castigate him for lying. In 2008, Frey made a literary comeback with his best-selling novel, Bright Shiny Morning.
2. Love and Consequences by Margaret B. Jones
After the uproar over James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, publishers would have been well served to vigorously vet memoirs, but this 2008 account about a part American Indian foster child immersed in gang life in South Central Los Angeles managed to reel in both its publisher and glowing reviews before it was discovered that none of it was true. In reality the author Margaret Seltzer, who had used the pseudonym Margaret B. Jones, was white, grew up with her biological family in Sherman Oaks, an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood, and had attended private school.
Seltzer’s sister revealed the Love and Consequences memoir as a phony, after seeing a profile about Seltzer in the New York Times. Seltzer later justified her deception, “I thought it was an opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to.” The publisher recalled the 19,000 copies of the book.
3. Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years by Misha Defonseca
In her 1997 book, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, Belgian-born Misha Defonseca described how she set out alone, at age 7, to find her Jewish parents who had been deported by the Nazis. Walking 1,900 miles across Europe, over the course of five years, she spent time in the Warsaw Ghetto, lived with wolves and killed a German soldier in self-defense. The book had limited success in the United States but became a best-seller overseas and was translated into 18 languages and made into a French film.
In 2008, eleven years after the book’s publication, an American genealogist unearthed Defonseca’s baptismal certificate, indicating she was Catholic, as well as evidence that she had attended school in Brussels during the time she was supposedly on her trek. The Nazis had executed her parents who were members of the Belgian resistance. Defonseca confessed in a statement that “Ever since I can remember, I felt Jewish…. There are times when I find it difficult to differentiate between reality and my inner world.”
4. The Autobiography of Howard Hughes by Clifford Irving
Writer Clifford Irving had already received a $765,000 advance and had delivered his manuscript of The Autobiography of Howard Hughes to publisher McGraw-Hill by the time the billionaire industrialist finally came forth to sue the publisher, saying that he had never met with Irving or given his approval for the project. Irving had gambled badly that the reclusive Hughes would never surface to denounce the hoax. By forging letters and setting up phony interviews, Irving had convinced the publisher and several key experts that the autobiography was authentic. He’d also managed to obtain a copy of a manuscript about Hugh’s right-hand man, which gave Irving’s work its remarkable detail.
After the swindle unraveled in 1972, Irving spent 17 months in prison. His book on the experience, The Hoax, was made into a film starring Richard Gere in 2007.
5. The Hitler Diaries
In 1983, the German magazine Stern published excerpts from some 60 volumes of Adolf Hitler’s diaries that had allegedly survived a crash near Dresden of a transport plane carrying the Führer’s personal effects. The sheer scope of the diaries, spanning 1932 to 1945, and their banal detail had persuaded British historian and Hitler expert Hugh Trevor-Roper of their authenticity. But Stern’s desire for secrecy on their sensational scoop had held it back from seeking more authoritative testing. Comprehensive analysis revealed historical inaccuracies in the text and inks and paper that dated after World War II.
The editor at Stern who had instigated the deal and the diaries’ forger were sentenced to four and a half years in prison for duping and defrauding the magazine, which had paid the equivalent of roughly $3.5 million for the counterfeit journals.
“Memoirs and Misinformation” is the latest reinvention of the 58-year-old star
When Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon handed in the book they had toiled on for eight years — a satirical “anti-memoir” about Carrey’s life but with increasingly extreme flights of absurdity — to Sonny Mehta, the late Knopf publisher said he would put it out as a novel. Carrey and Vachon protested.
“But Sonny, the project was to blow up the celebrity memoir,” they argued.
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“Well, yes,” replied Mehta. “But how then would you explain the flying saucers?”
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“Memoirs and Misinformation,” which was published Tuesday, is not an easy book to label. It opens with Carrey binge-watching Netflix while nursing a split from Renée Zellweger (who, here, leaves him for a bullfighter), pleading for his home security system to “Tell me I’m safe and loved” and craving the box-office success that brought him “closer to god.”
There’s much that’s straight from Carrey’s life, but it's an inflated version of his persona — “a hyperactive child making yuk-yuks,” as the book describes him. With overtones of “Network,” Carrey skewers celebrity, Hollywood, ego and himself. There’s Brazilian jiu-jitsu with Nic Cage, spiritual guru gatherings with Kelsey Grammar and a Tom Cruise referenced only as “Laser Jack Lightning.” Carrey, himself, is juggling movie options: a Mao Zedong film by Charlie Kaufman or “Hungry Hungry Hippos” in 3-D. Oh, and an apocalypse is approaching.
It may sound far-out, but for Carrey, truth lies in fiction. Even fiction in which Kelsey Grammar and U.F.O.s collide.
“There’s a lot of real feeling in this book,” said Carrey in a Zoom interview from his home in Hawaii. “It may be done in an out-there way but it sure is real to me.”
“Memoirs and Misinformation” is the latest reinvention of the 58-year-old star of “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” “The Mask,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “The Truman Show.” After veering into painting and political cartoons, it’s yet another new medium for Carrey. (Vachon wrote 2007’s “Mergers & Acquisitions.”) The book, Carrey says, “is dearer to me than anything I’ve done.”
The “illusion of persona” is the chief subject of “Memoirs and Misinformation.' In the last decade or more, Carrey has worked to deconstruct the best-known version of himself and make room for an emotional life that his public identity — “unflappably fun,” Carrey calls it — didn’t allow. He has spoken about bouts with depression and his ongoing spiritual journey. He has worked less frequently and sought satisfaction away from Hollywood.
What Is Fictional Memoir
“All personas after a while become sarcophagal. You want to claw your way out of them,” says Carrey. “You’re met all the time with ‘Why don’t you just be funny?’ I go, ‘Well, funny is one of the fingers on my hand.’ But I’m learning to use the whole hand.”
Make no mistake: “Memoirs and Misinformation” is funny. But it’s also a sober meditation on mortality, selfhood and the drive to entertain. A conventional memoir was never an option. “At the very least they’re reordered for effect,” says Carrey.
“From an early age, what I’ve always noticed about Jim is that he can change form,' says Vachon, who, after flying out to finish the book, has been stranded in Hawaii by the pandemic. “His memoir needed to be one that did that because that’s his truth.”
For Carrey, a cartoonishly malleable, head-to-toe comedian of absurdist abandon, the urge to perform began in his working-class upbringing outside Toronto with a mother who fought depression and prescription pills and a father he calls “a magical being.”
“I watched him be animated and loving in sharing this gift that he had. I went: That’s a great thing to be,” says Carrey, the youngest of four. “I could make my mother feel better. A lot of comics come from moms in need. My mother was a child of alcoholics and she didn’t get the love that she needed, so her kids were there to give her that love that she was missing. Especially me. I thought I could heal her. I thought I could save her life.”
That desire to be bigger than yourself and to bring joy to others is something Carrey both values sincerely and considers dangerous. “If it becomes an addiction to exceptionalism,” he says, “that’s a bad place to be.”
The book reminds Carrey’s longtime friend and “The Cable Guy” producer Judd Apatow of when he first met Carrey. He was then a successful impressionist who, “on a dime,” stopped doing impressions and began improvising his entire act, Apatow recalls. “It was like he just cracked open his brain to see what was inside.'
“We all start out young and ambitious and we have our dreams and we think our dreams will make us happy,” says Apatow. “And I think Jim was aware very early on that that’s not how it would go down.”
Carrey isn't sure when he began to feel “Jim Carrey” cleaving away from himself. Fame was fun, he says, until it wasn't.
“I tripped along for a long time,” Carrey says. “No one understands the value of anonymity until they lose it. You could say, ‘Well, that’s what you asked for.’ Yes, but it’s what a child asks for before they become an adult and understands what something means. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but it’s an odd thing and it keeps you in the house.”
There were low points. After the apparent suicide of Carrey's former girlfriend Cathriona White, he was sued for wrongful death by White's husband and her mother. Carrey denied involvement and counter-sued. By 2018, the suits were dismissed. “Memoirs and Misinformation” features plenty of farce, but there are also scenes of Hollywood tragedy that echo some of Carrey's heartaches.
Fictional Memoir Genre
“It really became an exercise of being able to say the things that are important to say in the most creative and abstract way possible and to deal with real painful and jarring movements in my life,” says Carrey.
Lately, Carrey has seemed to find an equilibrium. He’s starring in “Kidding,” a Showtime series with darker and more melancholic tones, and he was widely praised for his performance in “Hungry Hungry Hippo” -- correction, “Sonic the Hedgehog.” He has been busy sending out letters and book copies to everyone who makes cameos in the book.
“You can’t make a book about persona without personas,” says Carrey, quickly noting “it’s done with love.” “One day I had to call Nic (Cage) and say, ‘I wrote you into my fictitious memoir.’ I hardly got the sentence out and he said, ‘I’m so honored.’ He was amazed I had given him all the best lines.”
Is Carrey at peace? “I get there,' he says. As eager as he seems to be to take “Jim Carrey” and tear him to pieces, he seems — at least through a computer window thousands of miles away — at ease in his own skin.
“Whatever it was, it was the perfect cocktail to get us here to this moment,' Carrey says of his life. 'So I don’t regret it at all.”
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Semi Fictional Memoir X Ray
Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP