Public Reception
A number of fake memoirs in recent years have been published by renowned publishing houses and received critical acclaim before being exposed as partial or complete fabrications. Five of the memoirs, Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood (Binjamin Wilkomirski),The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams (Nasdijj), Love and Consequences (Margaret Seltzer),The greatest, my own story (Muhammad Ali and Richard Durham) and Go Ask Alice (Anonymous) were praised by the New York Times before being exposed as fabrications. Three of the memoirs, Love and Consequences (Margaret Seltzer), Angel at the Fence (Herman Rosenblat) and Odd Man Out (Matt McCarthy) were published, or in the case of Angel at the Fence, scheduled to be published, by Penguin Group USA. Two of the memoirs, A Million Little Pieces (James Frey) and The greatest, my own story (Muhammad Ali and Richard Durham) were published by Random House. Two of the authors, James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) and Herman Rosenblat (prior to writing his Angel at the Fence), as well as someone posing as Anthony Godby Johnson (A Rock and a Hard Place), appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, only to have their fabrications exposed, their book deals cancelled, and/or be confronted by Oprah on her show. The dust-up over falsified memoirs even inspired the title of Andrea Troy's satiric novel, "Daddy-An Absolutely Authentic Fake Memoir".
Read more about this topic: Fake Memoirs
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