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发帖数: 94 | 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_memoirs
(Fake memoirs form a category of literary forgery in which a wholly or
partially fabricated autobiography, memoir or journal of an individual is
presented as fact)
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List of fake memoirs and journals
Matt McCarthy, Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit
Viking (a division of Penguin Group USA) (February 2009) is a memoir
describing McCarthy's summer as a minor league pitcher. He writes about
playing with racist teammates who take steroids; however, statistics from
that season, combined with transaction listings and interviews with former
teammates, suggest that much of the book is false. Prior to having its
authenticity challenged, the book was promoted by Sports Illustrated.
Carolyn Coleburn, the publisher's vice president and director of publicity
said, “We rely on our authors to tell the truth and fact-check.”
Herman Rosenblat, Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived
(February 2009, cancelled), is a Holocaust memoir in which the author
invented the story that, while he was imprisoned in the Buchenwald
concentration camp, a young girl from the outside would pass him food
through the fence daily and years later they accidentally met and married.
Rosenblat appeared twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Prior to the book's
announced publication, Winfrey called the story "the single greatest love
story, in 22 years of doing this show, we've ever told on the air." The book
was scheduled for publication in February 2009 by Berkley Books, a division
of Penguin Group USA, but has been cancelled. Although the author
fabricated details about how he met his wife, he is an authentic holocaust
survivor.
Margaret Seltzer (pseud. Margaret B. Jones), Love and Consequences,
Riverhead Books (a division of Penguin Group USA) (2008), a critically
received memoir of a girl, part white and part native American, growing up
in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child in a world of drug dealers
and gang members. In fact, the work was completely fabricated.[9] Prior to
being exposed as fabricated, the book was praised as "humane and deeply
affecting" by Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times.
JT LeRoy (pseud. Laura Victoria Albert) published a number of fabricated
writings (c. 2005) in which LeRoy was presented as a transgendered, sexually
questioning, abused, former homeless teenage drug addict and male
prostitute.
James Frey, A Million Little Pieces, Doubleday Books (a division of Random
House) (2003), a best selling memoir in which the author created and
exaggerated significant details of his drug addiction and recovery. The
author appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, and in September 2005, the book
became an Oprah's Book Club selection. However, when the book's authenticity
was called into question, the author and publisher Nan Talese were invited
back and publicly scolded by Winfrey in a live face-to-face confrontation.
The media feasted over the televised showdown. David Carr of the New York
Times wrote, "Both Mr. Frey and Ms. Talese were snapped in two like dry
winter twigs."[6] "Oprah annihilates Frey," proclaimed Larry King.[10] New
York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote, "It was a huge relief, after our
long national slide into untruth and no consequences, into Swift boating and
swift bucks, into W.'s delusion and denial, to see the Empress of Empathy
icily hold someone accountable for lying,"[11] and the Washington Post's
Richard Cohen was so impressed by the confrontation that he crowned Winfrey
"Mensch of the Year."
Norma Khouri, Forbidden Love (also published as Honor Lost in the United
States), Bantam Books, Australia (2003); Doubleday, New York (2003), is the
supposed story of her best friend in Jordan, Dalia, who fell in love with a
Christian soldier. Dalia's Muslim father was not told of the relationship,
and when he eventually discovered it, he stabbed Dalia to death in a so-
called honor killing.
Michael Gambino (actually Michael Pelligrino) wrote The Honored Society,
Simon & Schuster (2001). The book, supposedly by the grandson of Mafioso
Carlo Gambino, described his life as a gangster, including spending 12 years
in prison for bribery, gambling, extortion, kidnapping, money laundering,
murder and pimping. Carlo Gambino’s real son, Thomas Gambino, exposed the
fraud, and the publisher withdrew the book.
Nasdijj (pseud. Timothy Patrick "Tim" Barrus), wrote The Blood Runs Like a
River Through My Dreams, Houghton Mifflin (2000), The Boy and the Dog Are
Sleeping (2003), and Geronimo's Bones: A Memoir of My Brother and Me (2004).
These works recounted various aspects of the author's supposed life,
including his Navajo heritage, his self-destructive and abusive parents, his
unhappy childhood as a migrant worker, his dysfunctional relationships with
other family members, and, eventually, his growing up to become the
nurturing father of first an adopted child with fetal alcohol syndrome and
then one who is HIV-positive. Prior to being exposed as fabricated, The
Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams was a New York Times Notable Book,
a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and winner of the Salon Book
Award. It was described by Esquire as an "authentic, important book...
Unfailingly honest and very nearly perfect."
Misha Defonseca (real name: Monique de Wael), Misha: A Mémoire of the
Holocaust Years, Mt. Ivy Press (1997), a fabricated memoir of a supposed
Holocaust survivor who walked 1,900 miles across Europe searching for her
parents, killed a German officer in self-defense and lived with a pack of
wolves. The work was a best seller, translated into 18 languages and was
made into a movie.
Binjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments, Shocken Books (US edition, 1996), an
acclaimed but fabricated Holocaust memoir.[14] Prior to being exposed as
fabricated, The New York Times called the book "stunning," the Los Angeles
Times described it as a "classic first-hand account of the Holocaust", it
received the 1996 National Jewish Book Award for Autobiography and Memoir,
in Britain it received the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize, and in France it
was awarded the Prix Memoire de la Shoah.
Helen Demidenko (pseud. Helen Dale), wrote The Hand That Signed the Paper,
Allen & Unwin, Australia (1994). Presented as a supposedly autobiographical
story of a student’s discovery of her family's bleak wartime history as
peasants in Ukraine under Stalinism and their “liberation” by the Nazi
invasion. The book won a number of awards.
Anthony Godby Johnson wrote A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant
Story, Crown Books, New York; Little Brown, London (1993), a story of a
young boy, sexually abused by his parents and later adopted, who discovers
he is HIV-positive and who develops AIDS. This book has been challenged on a
number of accounts and has been alleged to be the fictional product of
Vicki Johnson, also known as Vicki Fraginals Zackheim. "Tony," the subject
of the book, made an "appearance" on the Oprah Winfrey Show, interviewed
with his face obscured.[17]
Marlo Morgan wrote Mutant Message Down Under, MM Co. (self-published), Lees
Summit, Missouri (1991); Harper Collins, New York (1994). The book claimed
to be a memoir of her time spent with Aboriginals. The book has caused
protests by Aboriginal groups. Parts of it have been asserted to be invented
, and the publisher has reissued it labeled as fiction.
Lauren Stratford (actually Laurel Rose Willson) wrote Satan's Underground,
Harvest House, Oregon (1988), purporting to tell a true story of her
upbringing in a Satanic cult, but later branded as fabricated. She later
assumed the guise of a Holocaust survivor and adopted the alias of Laura
Grabowski.
Konrad Kujau forged The Hitler Diaries in 1983. When first published in the
Sunday Times, the diaries were authenticated by the historian Hugh Trevor-
Roper, but they were demonstrated to be crude fakes, written on modern paper
, within a few weeks.
David Rorvik wrote In his Image: the Cloning of a Man, J. B. Lippincott,
Philadelphia and New York (1978),[20] in which he claimed to have been part
of a successful endeavor to create a clone of a human being. A court, in a
defamation suit found the book was a hoax which the publisher subsequently
acknowledged, but Rorvik continues to maintain it is truthful.
Forrest Carter (pseud. Asa Earl Carter), The Education of Little Tree,
Delacorte Press (1976). An acclaimed book about growing up among the
Cherokee Indians, in fact fiction written by a former white supremacist.
Muhammad Ali and Richard Durham, The greatest, my own story, Random House (
1975). The book described the life and career of boxing champion Muhammad
Ali. The book claimed that Ali threw his gold medal in the river after it
failed to prevent him from being racially discriminated against. The New
York Times described the book as "honest" and "very convincing" and The
Detroit Free Press called it "the greatest, most honest contribution to
sports literature perhaps ever." Ali's sidekick Bundini Brown later told
Sports Illustrated writer Mark Kram, "Honkies sure bought into that one."
Ali's best friend Howard Bingham would later admit that the story was "
concocted."
Clifford Irving, The Autobiography of Howard Hughes, McGraw-Hill (1972). A
fabricated autobiography of the reclusive billionaire.
Anonymous (actually Beatrice Sparks), Go Ask Alice, Prentice-Hall (1971),
purportedly the diary of an anonymous teenage girl who died of a drug
overdose in the late 1960s. Sparks is known for producing a number of books
purporting to be the "real diaries" of troubled teenagers.[23] Prior to the
book's authenticity being challenged, The New York Times praised it as an "
extraordinary work for teenagers" and "a document of horrifying reality and
literary quality".
Carlos Castaneda wrote a series of books that describe his training in
traditional Mesoamerican shamanism, starting with The Teachings of Don Juan,
University of California Press (1968). His 12 books have sold more than 8
million copies in 17 languages. It is disputed whether his stories are
truthful or fabricated.
Friedrich Nietzsche My Sister and I (1951). Supposedly written in 1889 or
early 1890 during Nietzsche's stay in a mental asylum, this fictitious
biography makes several bold and otherwise unreported claims, most notably
of an incestuous relationship between Nietzsche and his sister.
John Knyveton The Diary of a Surgeon in the Year 1751-1752, edited and
transcribed by Ernest Gray, New York, D. Appleton-Century (1938). Surgeon's
Mate: the diary of John Knyveton, surgeon in the British fleet during the
Seven Years War 1756-1762, edited and transcribed by Ernest
Gray, London, Robert Hale (1942). Man midwife; the further experiences of
John Knyveton, M.D., late surgeon in the British fleet, during the years
1763-1809, edited and narrated by Ernest Gray, London, Robert Hale (1946).
These three diaries are believed to be fictitious, adapted from works by
Thomas Denman, 1733-1815.[24][25]
Joan Lowell's Cradle of the Deep (1929), published by Simon & Schuster.
Lowell claimed that, before she was even a year old, her sea captain father
took her away from her ailing mother to live on the Minnie A. Caine, a
trading ship. She lived on the ship, with its all male crew, until she was
17. The book ends with the ship burning and sinking off Australia, and with
Lowell swimming three miles to safety, with a family of kittens clinging by
their claws to her back. In fact, Lowell had been on the ship, which
remained safe in California, for only 15 months. The book was a sensational
best seller until it was exposed as a pure invention.
Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance (actually Sylvester Clark Long) wrote an
autobiography entitled Long Lance (1928), published by Cosmopolitan Book
Company, in which he claimed to have been born a Blackfoot, son of a chief,
in Montana's Sweetgrass Hills, was wounded eight times in World War I and
promoted to the rank of captain. In fact, the story was fabricated and Lance
was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Abel Fosdyk (likely A. Howard Linford), Abel Fosdyk's Story, published in
The Strand Magazine, 1913. An almost certainly fabricated story, in diary
form, of the mystery of the abandoned Mary Celeste, written by a supposed
passenger.
Edmund Backhouse wrote China Under the Empress Dowager: being the History of
the Life and Times of Tzu Hsi, Compiled from State Papers and the Private
Diary of the Comptroller of her Household, London, Heinemann; Philadelphia,
J. B. Lippincott & Co. (1910). The diary on which the book was based was
later shown to have been fabricated by Backhouse.
Philip Aegidius Walshe (actually Montgomery Carmichael), The Life of John
William Walshe, F.S.A., London, Burns & Oates, (1901); New York, E. P.
Dutton (1902), a son’s story of his father’s life in Italy as “a profound
mystic and student of everything relating to St. Francis of Assisi.” In
fact the son, the father, and the memoir were all invented by Montgomery
Carmichael.
Davy Crockett, Col. Crockett's exploits and adventures in Texas: wherein is
contained a full account of his journey from Tennessee to the Red River and
Natchitoches, and thence across Texas to San Antonio; including many hair-
breadth escapes; together with a topographical, historical, and political
view of Texas ... Written by Himself, T.K. and P.G. Collins, Philadelphia (
1836). Supposedly Crockett’s journal taken at the Alamo by Mexican General
Castrillón and then recovered at the Battle of San Jacinto, but in fact
written by Richard Penn Smith and Charles T. Beale.[28] The work has been
called "ingenious pseudo-autobiography."
Maria Monk Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: as Exhibited in a Narrative of
Her Sufferings During a Residence of Five Years as a Novice, and Two Years
as a Black Nun, in the Hôtel-Dieu Nunnery at Montreal, Howe & Bates,
New York (1836). The book is a wildly sensationalistic story of life in a
Montreal convent where nuns were forced to have sex with the priests in the
seminary next door. The book may have been written by Theodore Dwight, John
J. Slocum or William K. Hoyte.
Slavomir Rawicz, The Long Walk, is a false narrative derived from a true
story told at last by a survivor.
Lorenzo Carcaterra, Sleepers, contains a few real names and places with
events lifted from other works or entirely fictionalized.[32]
A. L. Finch's Child P.O.W.―A Memoir of Survival (three self-published US
editions, 2007, 2008 and 2011), about a mother and child’s experience as
internees in Japanese captivity in the Philippines during the Second World
War, has been exposed as a fabricated account.[33][34] Finch is the pen name
of A. L. Peeples of Lakewood, WA. Also, the University of Puget Sound
published a cover profile of Finch / Peeples in the Autumn 2009 edition of
its alumni magazine Arches but later removed that edition from its website.
Tamil Tigress by Niromi de Soyza
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