In honor of April Fools’ Day, I was going to write about (in)famous literary hoaxes: historic incidents of made-up memoirs when an author manages to trick the entire reading public.
There are already a number of Top Ten Lists of these kinds of hoaxes, including one from the Guardian and another from ABC News. They include a handful of Holocaust memoirs and James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces.”
But then I started to think more about it. What is a hoax, anyways, when dealing with literature? Why do people allow themselves to feel betrayed by an author? I’m going to hesitantly posit an idea: The whole concept of a literary hoax is a dying one because of the advent of postmodern literature.
Okay, bear with me here.
All the memoir hoaxes from the aforementioned lists rely on strict concepts of fiction and nonfiction, invention versus truth. But we’re in an era when these lines are blurred without consequence. Not just by people trying to manipulate their readers, but by authors doing so very transparently.
Notice that Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius isn’t mentioned as a hoax-doer even though he fabricated just like some on those lists did. In Eggers’ quasi-autobiographical anti-memoir, there are blatant fantasy scenes and characters come in the narrative to comment on the book itself. In footnotes, Eggers reveals how he’s manipulating the reader.
Sure. there are people who criticize him, don’t like him, and nitpick over the factual nature of the book. But no one is calling his bluff, saying he’s a trickster. Because he laid out what he was doing. It was a very self-aware collage, and now Eggers is one of our most popular contemporary authors!
I am grateful that there’s room in contemporary nonfiction for invention and creative license, as long as the author tells you what they are doing and their intention. You can break down the fourth wall, have a meta-conversation, and talk about how you can’t remember something clearly so you’re making it up.
Postmodern writing (certainly not the only prevailing style now, there is a post-post) is all about transparency and about being self-conscious, ironic, even self-mocking. Think of Nabokov’s Speak, Memory. Think of William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow.
All the memoir hoaxes on those lists rely on some disappointment by readers who assume that everything the author says about themselves is true.
I do draw the line when someone doesn’t make their intentions clear and then goes on a publicity tour and does a whole PR stunt to make money. That is manipulative, James Frey. He probably wasn’t into the idea of having a meta-conversation with the reader about the made-up parts of his book because he really wanted people to believe something about him that simply wasn’t true.
But writing a book that has fictional and nonfictional elements in itself is not bad! Have I sufficiently justified my desire to rid our conversations of the idea of a literary hoax?
