As Another Memoir Is Faked, Trust Suffers (from non-fiction to fiction)

[groovedaddy]

In media circles, there is a joke about facts that are too good to check. This week Oprah Winfrey and the New York publishing industry stumbled on yet another unverified account in the form of a Holocaust survivor who said his future wife had helped him stay alive while he was imprisoned as a child in a Nazi concentration camp by throwing apples over the fence to him.

The story of Herman and Roma Rosenblat, who said they reunited years later on a blind date in New York, turned out to be fabricated, and over the weekend the publisher of his memoir, “Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived,” canceled the February release of the book. This isn’t the first time either a publisher or Ms. Winfrey has been gullible in the face of an exaggerated tale. Now both Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin Books, and Ms. Winfrey are faces on a media dartboard, with Ms. Winfrey dodging criticisms of what the media blog Gawker called her “liar’s club.”

Ms. Winfrey has not commented publicly on Mr. Rosenblat’s fabrications And, other than to announce the cancellation of the book, Berkley Books has said nothing further.

Nearly three years ago Ms. Winfrey was famously duped by James Frey, the author of “A Million Little Pieces,” his memoir of drug addiction and recovery in which he embellished several details; for example, he wrote that he had spent nearly three months in jail when in fact he had been held for a few hours. An outraged Ms. Winfrey rebuked Mr. Frey on television, telling him that he “betrayed millions of readers.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/books/31opra.html?th&emc=th

[Dennis Donovan]

1. This is a bit of a sad story (Fry was just a grifter - Herman lied because he thought he had to)...

Evidently, Rosenblat was ill several years ago and hallucinated the story about his future wife and the apples she chucked over the fence. When he came to, he believed the hallucination was a message from his mother to publish the story - to tell the world the horrors of th Holocaust in a way that was inspirational.

Granted, a lie is a lie is a lie, but Herman Rosenblat believed his lie was for a higher purpose.

[Historic NY]

2. Oprah needs to give up her book club membership.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Publishers do NO fact-checking any more. This is why some biographies of famous people...

published by major, 'respectable' publishers, are chock full of crap.

Then Vanity Fair publishes and excerpt and it all becomes 'true'.

[LisaM]

4. Ever compare biographies written while the subject (and family and friends) were alive

to those written years later?

The difference is enormous. I especially like celebrity autobiographies, which are full of the most fulsome crap you can imagine - generally, reality is a lot spicier and more interesting.