Across the River...and into Cyberspace

By E-mailing everyone I know, I have just publicly launched the Website for ACROSS THE RIVER, which includes the first chapter. And I had the idiot idea of asking for feedback. This feels like a combination of my three most often recurring nightmares: showing up for the final exam without having studied; showing up at an important event in only my underwear; and showing up at the election booth and accidentally voting Republican. Which may be what Woody Allen meant when he said, “Ninety percent of life is just showing up.”

So to distract myself, I will, like everyone else in the known universe, comment on the flap over James Frey and his fiction-based memoir, “A Million Little Pieces of Bull Dinky.” Oprah’s getting lots of pats on her broad back for having the “courage” to “admit her mistakes” and “confront” him on her "show." Com’on! Humiliating a writer is SO easy! Just tell him that you bought the book a few months ago but haven’t read it yet. That the first chapter was good, but it kind of went downhill from there. That the book reminded you too much of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” If Oprah had been truly Oprah-like, she would have staged an intervention, with Frey surrounded by his loved ones and a competent psychiatrist to get him to admit his addiction to falsehoods. But she didn’t even bother to drag out Dr. Phil to harangue Frey about his “truth issues.” Where was the compassion, Oprah? Where was the group hug?

And face it, O, this was all your fault anyway. You and Phil Donahue started the whole public confession industry back in the ’70s and ’80s. Eventually, we would have HAD to run out of sensational-but-true stories, which is why we now have TV “reality” shows, which is like a Peeping Tom going to a strip joint (where’s the fun in sneaking a peek when it’s all for show anyway?). Frey tried to sell his book as fiction first, and no one was interested. Now suddenly, as a memoir, it was a masterpiece? Like most struggling writers, he probably just wanted to be published, for goodness’ sake, and didn’t think anyone except his mother would actually read it. An Oprah pick? In your dreams!

Even when a book is clearly labeled fiction, though, everyone wants to believe at least part of it is true. In author interviews, I too have inevitably asked the question, “How similar are you to your main character?” Profiles very often include biographical data that links the author’s own life to details in his fiction. Wouldn’t we all feel cheated if it came out that John Steinbeck had never even visited Salinas, California? To bring it all back to my own novel, of course, I’ve had workshop buddies insist that my true details could not possibly have happened and that my fake stuff rang so true it just had to be real. And they are always disappointed when I tell them that I made up my fiction.

Maybe the solution is to give memoirs the same disclaimers that are perfectly acceptable at the end of blockbuster movies: “Based on a true story” or “Inspired by true events.” A few fudged truths didn’t stop “A Beautiful Mind” from winning all those Oscars and making millions.

And the Bible...well, no disclaimers there. Yet whether you file it under "fiction" or "non," over the years it has inspired quite a few folks to kick some bad habits.

This blog was inspired by actual tongue-in-cheek opinions briefly held by the author, as she remembers it and without anesthesia.