Can someone explain to me how Ben Mezrich's imaginatively enhanced nonfiction is different/more okay than what James Frey did?
With the amount of scandal that faux-memoirists and creative non-fiction liars have caused in the past few months, I find it odd that more people aren't upset about this author's free-wheeling take on the genre.
I seem to be the only person in publishing who wasn't totally outraged by the whole James Frey thing, and the last thing I want to do is run Ben Mezrich up on a rail here, especially since I haven't yet read his NYT bestseller Bringing Down the House. I also think that people tend to be too naive about print media, assuming that because something is inked on newsprint in the Globe or the Times or printed in a book, it's a real, honest to God fact. I tend to view media with a more suspicious eye, largely because so many of my cohorts in my Sarah Lawrence days were borderline conspiracy theorists. In the end, everything we write & say is filtered through our bias, thus whatever version of "the truth" a person tells is actually more like a fact-opinion-bias-based cocktail; we can only hope that it's well balanced.
But yeah, this article makes Ben Mezrich sound like Pinocchio. I'm just saying...
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A lot of this comes down to publishers taking responsibility for how they are labeling and selling books--yet the publishers all seem to pretend it's no their fault.
Seems pretty black and white to me: If it's not a true story, then it's NOT NONFICTION!
But the "creative spin" of the publicity/marketing side of the biz too often rears its ugly head, which is why so many books featuring untrue stories wind up labeled as nonfiction.
The disturbing truth: It all comes down to the question of "How can we sell the most copies?" and completley midleads the consumer.
Ah, publishing has so much integrity these days!
I'm sure you heard about the untrue holocaust memoir. I personally can't see how anyone even believed that one. I think that's a case of just wanting to believe, à la Fox Mulder's poster.
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