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LitNotes: Fake Writer Week 2008
March 7, 2008
Tap-Dances with Wolves: The fabricated story of child Holocaust survivor Misha Defonseca who supposedly lived with wolves at least twice during her European flight "is not actual reality, but was my reality, my way of surviving." says fabricator Monique de Wael (NB: de Wael now lives under the name Misha Defonseca.) Despite warnings from respected scholars of Holocaust studies, the book was published in 1997, with a blurb from Elie Wiesel, no less. Says Blake Eskin in Slate: "For others to continue telling the story of Misha, especially now that she acknowledges it's a fable, is an affront to those authentic Holocaust survivors with sad but not otherworldly stories, to the memory of those who did not live to document their own fate, and to those who take the study of history seriously."
Big Sister Is Watching You: The ignominy of being unmasked as a fraud can only be compounded by knowing the whistle-blower was your older sibling. 47-year-old Cyndi Hoffman saw a profile in The New York Tmes about her 33-year-old sister Margaret Seltzer and called Riverhead Books to let them know some things didn't square with the sisters' shared history. I want to hear Hoffman's side of the story...
Just the Facts, Ma'am: Two words to the publishing industry from "your colleagues in the newspaper industry" says The Washington Post's Bob Thompson: "Fact check!" Thompson muses that if publishers were required to stamp "Too Good to Check!" on jackets of books they didn't want to spend precious dollars fact-checking, those dollars might suddenly be found...
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on March 7, 2008 | Comments (3)
