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. Often, the purported author of the work also is fabricated. In recent years, there have been a number of such memoirs published by major publishers, some of which were well received critically and even became best sellers, but which subsequently were shown to be partly or completely fabricated. A number of recent fake memoirs fall into the category of "misery lit," where the author claims to have overcome bereavement, abuse, poverty or other serious trauma. Several similarly are fabricated stories about the Holocaust, in at least one case written by an actual Holocaust survivor.
As a result of the recent series of best seller memoirs that have turned out to be fabricated, there have been calls for stronger vetting of new authors and fact checking of their books.
Read more about Fake Memoirs: Public Reception, List of Fake Memoirs and Journals
Famous quotes containing the words fake and/or memoirs:
“Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations. For the sensibility it has that arbitrariness and importance which works take on when they are no longer noticeable elements of the environment. In America kitsch is Nature. The Rocky Mountains have resembled fake art for a century.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“There are people who can write their memoirs with a reasonable amount of honesty, and there are people who simply cannot take themselves seriously enough. I think I might be the first to admit that the sort of reticence which prevents a man from exploiting his own personality is really an inverted sort of egotism.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)