WHAT A HEEL!: Another Fake Autobiography
The same week that author Misha Defonseca admitted that she lied about being a Holocaust survivor in her autobiography, comes word that Margaret Seltzer (who wrote under the pseudonym Margaret B. Jones) lied about her childhood in her autobiography “Love and Consequences,” published last year. Contrary to the claims in her book, Seltzer was not “a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods,” but “is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles … with her biological family. … [and] has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members,” reports The New York Times. Aside from these minor details, the book is 100 percent factually true.
This latest autobiography brouhaha prompted print journalists to self-righteously explain “fact checking” to their brethren in book publishing (um, who fact checked Jayson Blair’s articles for The New York Times?). It was left to The New York Sun (which, to the best of The Stiletto’s knowledge, has yet to fact-check this article containing disputed quotes or issue a correction) to elucidate why it is economically unfeasible for book publishers to nail down every fact, figure and quote in a book.
“Love and Consequences” publisher Riverhead Books has canceled the author's book-signing appearance, recalled some 19,000 copies of the book and is offering refunds to purchasers.
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