Too Good to be True

Talk about an oversight! According to an article in today’s New York Times, Love and Consequences, a book by Margaret B. Jones, is entirely fabricated. This “memoir” details the author’s life growing up as a foster child and becoming involved in gangs in South-Central Los Angeles. Jones, whose real name is Margaret Seltzer, recently admitted to making up the account. Now, the heat is on her publisher and news organizations that “helped publicize what appeared to be a searing autobiography.”

Mimi Read, a freelance reporter who wrote a profile of the author that appeared in the New York Times last week, said in her own defense: “The way I look at it is that it’s just like when you get in a car and drive to the store — you assume that the other drivers on the road aren’t psychopaths on a suicide mission.”

Read also mentioned that she contacted Seltzer’s fiancé and asked Seltzer to give information about Uncle Madd Ronald, her supposed former gang leader who was now in prison.

Read mentioned that “Ms. Seltzer provided a prison name and prison identification number, and a copy editor confirmed that the prison existed.”

Even though a copy editor checked that the prison existed, is that enough? What about taking it one step beyond and verifying the identification number of the prisoner? I wonder what other “facts” in that book could have possibly been caught early, thus helping to unravel her story before it was published, and before organizations embarrassed themselves by promoting a complete lie. Then again, you don’t expect someone to lie about his or her entire life story in print.

“She seemed to be who she said she was. Nothing in her home or conversation or happenstance led me to believe otherwise,” Read said.

You can never be too careful.

Seltzer could have made a great fiction author.