OMG best publishing-biz story EVAR.
If you work in the book biz, if you know anyone who does, or if you're just a bookish person, check out this article I came across in the New York Times. (The online edition--like I'm going to pay money to peruse that rag in print . . .).
If you don't feel like following the link, here's the gist:
High-powered editor at a major NYC publishing house signs up a young woman (who presents herself as being half white/half Native American) to write her memoirs about gang-bangin' in the hood in LA, dealing drugs, watching people being shot, etc.
Turns out the book is a pack o' lies.
Just published--to "acclaim," as the NYT story tells it--it's being recalled.
The young woman in question is in fact a full-blood Caucasian who grew up in the Valley and graduated from a swanky private high school (Episcopal, no less!).
She fabricated everything in the book from the stories she heard while volunteering with organizations aimed at "reducing gang violence."
Well, fair play to her for doing something for the wider SoCal community. (The one that doesn't live in the Valley and attend swanky private schools.)
But passing herself off as a gang-banger is like LIFSOS passing himself off as an environmentalist because he occasionally takes out the recycling.
I squealed with glee and rubbed my hands as I read the article because it so totally encompasses everything I despise about the book-publishing industry, in which LIFSOS has labored lo these many years.
So much so that I'm tempted to launch into one of my weapons-grade rants . . . but I'll resist the temptation to do so, because I would just bore you.
Suffice to say that the main point here should be obvious to the 25 percent or so of Americans who read books on a regular basis . . .
In the last few years there's been a spate of "memoirs" that have turned out to be wholly or in large part fiction.
We all remember Oprah's televised public flaying of James Frey a couple of years ago, of course.
What I'm driving at here is that you'd think--wouldn't ya?--that given the industry's track record with these so-called memoirs, the editor and publisher of this book might have been motivated to apply the ol' due diligence in vetting the "author's" story.
After all, the book was in the works for three years, and most of her claims could have been fact-checked using easily accessible public sources . . . like, um, Google.
But apparently not.
So the whole mishigas got LIFSOS to thinking . . .
If so many people can totally lie about their life experiences, and parlay those lies into tasty book deals, why can't I get away with it?
(Incidentally, the article quotes the publisher as saying the writer got an advance of "less than $100,000." Which is such a typical bit of publishing obfuscation. What does that figure mean? Did she get $0.99--or $99,999.99?)
So, I've come up with some ideas for book proposals based on LIFSOS's life and times, presented below.
Wish me luck with the agents.
You Got the Yayo, Dude? My Years with the Latin Kings. (Sample Text): "What ees it you want, LIFSOS?" said the man known simply as El Jefe, as his bodyguards fingered the triggers of their Uzis and the ceiling fan overhead beat at the humid morning air of Bogota. "I want the world--and everythin' in it," I replied, "and also a lightly toasted bagel with cream cheese. And a V-8. With a slice of lemon if you have it."
Retreat? As if!: With LIFSOS at Fallujah. (Sample Text): "Colonel LIFSOS, we're hopelessly surrounded by insurgents! We have to pull back!" With sniper fire zinging all around me, I calmly took the cigar from my mouth and regarded the trembling lieutenant. "Son," I said, "You can stay here and eat falafel and watch Al-Jazeera if you want, but I am leading this battalion in a bayonet charge, just like the ones I led in 'Nam! But . . . you're a lot younger and in much better shape than me, so, um, you go first. Come to think of it, that's an order."
Oh! Calcutta! Redux: Giving, Living, and Loving With Mother Theresa. (Sample Text): When she walked into the Leprosy Ward late that night, I could see her habit clinging tightly to her body in the moonlight. As I watched her moving among the lepers, murmuring words of comfort, that terrible unholy longing--the longing I had fought against so long and so hard--once again consumed my soul like the flesh-eating disease that was consuming the bodies of the sufferers stretched out before us. Was that the beating of my heart that I heard--or was it merely the sound of the patients banging their suppurating limbs on the floor in a futile effort to alleviate their unimaginable suffering?
Man Mountain, Mountain Man: How I conquered Everest . . . and Myself. (Sample Text): "Don't worry, buddy," I told my climbing partner as I cradled his limp body in my arms, "I'm going to get you off this mountain. You'll be drinking yak-butter tea at base camp tomorrow morning." With a voice weakened by hypothermia and oxygen starvation--a voice I could barely hear over the howling wind--he said, "No, LIFSOS, I'm done for. Leave me here and go on. Someone has to live to tell the story of what we went through getting to the summit . . ." "In that case, OK, I guess," I replied. "Do you mind if I take your last Toblerone bar?"
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