Comments on: Fabrication Yet Factual

By: bicyclemark

bicyclemark — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:59:48 +0000

right on.

By: DROCK

DROCK — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 02:45:06 +0000

People get so high and mighty on this crap and it’s so self freaking righteous and obnoxious. I’m reading million little pieces right now and I know there are some parts of it that are made up, that doesn’t detract from the story. Because it’s a freaking “story” about some guy or some girl that you never met and has nothing to do with you. I mean if this guy was a fucked up as he says he was in the book do you actually think he remembered the all the freaking details of his detox? It’s a freaking story about a drug addict and people are shocked that some of the fact aren’t correct…wow picture that a drug addict not recalling all the details of week long drug and booze benders and possibly embellishing the story!

I wish people had the same crusade for facts when it came to their elected officials and nightly news.

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:34:47 +0000

I think the responsibility lies with the author (no pun intended.) There’s nothing wrong with an author mixing up fact and fiction and creating a “story” out of it, but when the author states that their work is a “memoir,” then the expectation is that everything in there is true.

If blame can be placed on the publishers, it could be for the fact that they seem way too eager to publish memoirs of intense personal struggle, because those sell, especially since this is a hot genre right now. So when a well-written story of someone living in the projects comes along, or a father-son tale of crystal meth abuse appears….ka-ching! Everybody wins. Except the readers, who are being manipulated.

By: bicyclemark

bicyclemark — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:19:36 +0000

Hey B…. so to continue a little further.. does the responsibility/fault remain with the publisher to properly fact-check and actually do work to checkout the authors story?

Seems like thats where it should be.. I don’t really have faith in most media for fact checking anything unless someone calls in a “anonymous tip”.

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 02:30:52 +0000

I think there’s a difference between a blog that doesn’t present itself as being necessarily 100% true (Tony’s is of course a great example), and something that does purport to be true, as memoirs like Love and Consequences, or A Million Little Pieces, do.

I like reading both, but I want to know beforehand what I’m getting myself into, because whenever you’re dealing with The Truth, the reader/viewer/listener is opening themselves up a bit more, making it a shared experience, because it “really” happened.

It’s the difference between the type of experience you have when you watch When the Levees Broke, and when you watch The Day After Tomorrow. There’s a sense of trust that goes into the Real Story versus the Made Up Story.