The recent publicity over various books which had been marketed and produced as true stories but turned out to be either partially false or totally fabricated has led to people (mostly staff) asking that the book be classified as “fiction.” In all these cases we have replied that we can’t do that as the book is not fiction.
Norma Khouri, that shrewd character whose bestselling book, Forbidden love, is the best example. She had certainly read the market right when she concocted a tale of the sad and sorry lot of Arabian women and the book became a bestseller. Shame it was all made up. Shame too that James Frey’s A million little pieces upset Oprah when she found that a book about a terrible childhood told things that weren’t necessarily true – or as terrible.
And, most recently, we have Margaret Seltzer’s Love and consequences which was an eye-opening account of gang life in L.A. The problem was whose eye as the author came from a very different background.
There’s also the book about the girl who trekked 1,900 miles across Europe with a pack of wolves in order to find her parents. Okay, it wasn’t exactly what happened said the author but she found it was hard to differentiate what happened with her imagination.
Where does all this end: are all the truckload of so-called misery memoirs coming out of Britain all true? As the ante is constantly upped with memories of horrible childhoods becoming more and more outlandishly horrible, questions are being raised about whether the decision to publish so many of these is purely commercial: the market is there so let’s supply it.
It is true to say that libraries can only categorise books by the intended genre of the book and a novel is written as a work of fiction and therefore something intended as a nonfiction title (however made up it is) can’t be a novel. Hopefully the books that are almost totally fabricated may die out but I wouldn’t hold my breath: the dreaded Tuesday Lobsang Rampa is still in print despite the fact that he wasn’t really a Tibetan lama but a plumber’s son from Devon and everyone accepted that the Baptist minister who had his hugely bestselling 90 days in heaven wasn’t making it up.
See also our post on Autobiographical Honesty: fact or fiction.
6 May 2008 at 2:57 pm
It’s a shame that there isn’t a readily-accessible resource in or alongside the library catalogue that we can use to quickly determine the veracity of a book purported to be non-fiction.
Add the Chinese pseudo-history of Gavin Menzies to your list also…
7 May 2008 at 11:22 am
James Frey’s weasley little deceptions and manipulation of the truth is the least of his crimes. The fact he can write so incredibly badly and still get published is the greater evil!
7 May 2008 at 11:26 am
The novel is not the only form of fiction, though. For example, there is diary fiction and fiction written in letter form.
I agree with your staff who think it appropriate to reclassifying fiction purporting to be fact into the fiction section.
Otherwise, withdraw such books entirely from the collection. After all, I want to know whether a book I am reading has any credibility or not!
8 May 2008 at 2:15 pm
When I wrote about true and untrue memoirs I was making the point that vast amounts of unverifiable material are published and only a book actually written as and intended to be fiction could have a fiction label. If libraries start reclassifying items in this way or removing things from the shelves because they are “untrue” there would be no stopping – how can huge numbers of books in areas like religion, the supernatural, etc., ever be proved to be true – vast swathes of a library collection would be out the door if this was the case. If anyone is at fault it is publishers for going for sensation every time and feeding a voracious market for misery and hysteria.
Philip