Yes, let's go back to the glory days of 2006 when you couldn't buy good jeans to save your life. Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall, and today we have a very special April Fool's Day episode with our pal, Chelsea Weber-Smith. Chelsea is the host of the wonderful podcast, American Hysteria. You can hear me on there talking about chicken soup for the soul.
And in keeping with the theme of books that seem a little bit unbelievable, we're talking today about hoax memoirs, just like last year, this time on April Fool's Day, 2024. we were talking about some of our favorite hoaxes, including the Loch Ness Monster and my personal favorite, the Spaghetti Tree. We are talking today about a bouquet of hoax memoirs, including the first hoax memoir that rocked my world, James Fry's A Million Little Pieces.
We're going to start with that and bring in our frequent guest star, Oprah, and then move on to the fake Holocaust memoir, the fake gang member memoir, and to close with the fake child prodigy memoir. This was such a fun episode for me to do because we got to get into really some of the bigger questions about what it means to create, what it means to be creative, what truth.
really means in art and where we really need it and what deeper truths we can maybe unearth from ourselves by just saying how it feels rather than trying to create a documentary record of what happened and also how the truth is a shy little creature worth winning over and that you probably can't do it if millions of dollars are on the line. We recently put out an episode on what's bringing you joy in this strange year of 2025. And I just wanted to thank again, everybody who sent in a story.
Everybody whose story we used or didn't use. Everybody who thought about sending one in, but then didn't. You're important too. They were all wonderful. And we're all trying to reach out and find each other. And it helps. I think all of the reaching counts for something. So thank you for reaching with us. And thanks for continuing down this road. We also have a March bonus out that I'm so excited to share with you. We have two legendary guests, celebrity correspondent Eve Lindley.
and the host of Sentimental Garbage, Caroline O'Donohue, talking about Marilyn Monroe's happy birthday, Mr. President dress, and that time Kim Kardashian wore it, and how we all felt. So very many feelings. And we're going to talk about dresses and feelings and feelings about dresses and stardom and girl culture. And it was such a fun romp. And I hope that you join us and come romp around.
Here in these parts, it's spring. We appear to have made it through another winter. And if you're in the upper Midwest, then... You will have officially made it through in about six weeks. And thank you for making it through. So here's your episode. We hope you like this one. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we talk about hoaxes, misinformation, and why Books don't always tell the truth. And with me today is Kelsey Weber-Smith.
Thrilled to be here. Thrilled to be hoaxed by you and learn of the hoaxes. I have a little glass of wine, which I don't usually do. I like that you're disclosing that. It's St. Patrick's Day after all. You're right as an American to throw up on an Irish person. Although I am British, so. So, you know, we won't get into that.
But yeah, I'm just happy to like get to sit back and be told. I enjoy being told things. It's exciting. Yeah. And I hoaxed you last year. Really, we did kind of a rundown of just some of my favorite hoaxes. including Nessie, of course, and Alzheimer, and the spaghetti farmer, Hope. Of course, a beautiful one. And today I wanted to talk about hoax memoirs, which is one of my favorite topics and which is also integral to both of our fields in many ways, one of them being the satanic panic.
Which we couldn't have without the hoax memoir, let's be real. No, I mean, it was a prolific time for people that wanted us to believe that babies were being buried in abandoned parking lots. Yeah. Really a thriving industry. And are there like any. hoax memoirs that have hoax to you are there any that you're attached to or any that kind of in your your research history stick out to you because you also
Talk about a lot of different liars on your show, American Hysteria. I do. Lots of different liars. You know, I mean, I'm always going to say Michelle remembers because it's the classic. It's the one that brought you and I together as friends on those hallowed steps. of the AWP convention. But... And I'm a big Mike Warnke fan. I did love doing the one with you. that we did after our Jack Chick Chick Tracked series about the vampire, the man who said he was a vampire and a werewolf.
You can learn about that on our episode called Interview with the Ex Vampire. It's a whole lot of fun and absolutely stunningly ridiculous. And yet people will believe that. Men change into werewolves because of Jesus Christ somehow. Hmm. Yeah. I didn't know about the Jesus connection, but, you know, what do I know about werewolves? Or rather, I suppose I should say that...
Despite the power of Jesus Christ, people turn into werewolves. And then they turn back into followers of Christ when they realize that... It ain't all it's cracked up to be ripping your skin off and turning into a wolf. Yeah. Well, and that's what we're getting into because like we can't have the satanic panic without hoax memoir. The satanic panic is started.
in many ways by Michelle Remembers, which comes out in 1980. And as you know, Michelle Remembers is interesting for many reasons, but partly because I think it would not have been published if Sybil hadn't come out in the 70s, which was a huge bestseller. And so when Michelle Remembers comes out, you have a publisher who's recently left a larger imprint who knows he has to come up with a profitable book and who ends up with the Michelle Remembers.
manuscript and is like or the Michelle remembers deal that becomes the manuscript and is like yeah this is it this is going to be the next Sybil and it's a Sybil thing where you have someone recovering memories of extreme abuse, which we know that American readers love to read about if they believe they're doing it in an instructive way rather than a sadistic way. See also A Child Called It, a major bestseller of the 90s. One of the most horrifying books that you can, you know, that.
Like, I remember seeing every third adult reading that in 1996. And then at a certain point, you realize what's actually in it. And you're like, What? Why are you doing this to yourself? But so we have Michelle remembers. Being positioned is something that is sure to be a bestseller because it's similar to a previous bestseller. And this is important partly because it's just how bestsellers work and how book deals work.
When you're young or when you're someone who doesn't end up sort of knowing how publishing or any kind of media really works, then like I think you have this idea that. What happens in a book is like the books that are published, especially from a nonfiction perspective, are just.
at least an attempt at a fairly objective rendering of the most interesting things being written year by year, as opposed to a kind of mathematical attempt to find the most similar but not too similar thing to whatever the last big thing was which of course we saw with twilight you know
needing an army of copycats to sort of continue that tidal wave. And from that, we got the Vampire Diaries TV show and like a bunch of other lesser vampires and then vampires were played out and we had to move on to something else in YA literature that I can't remember. Right, right. Is it true? Sarah, I feel like Emma Eisenberg, our friend and writer,
How you had to actually pay for your own fact checker. Typically when you're writing. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like stunning. That's stunning. Right. Where it's just like it's all on you, babe. And I guess that's how we got a million little pieces. And that is my first example. I knew it. I haven't even told you. Yeah, because that's the example. So or it is for our generation, a million little pieces, I think was like,
The great memoir hoax moment of our generation and the one that people like 50 percent at least of people alive think of when you mention a hoax memoir. And what do you remember about that? Well, I mean, I remember the cover, right? It was so iconic. It was great. It was a great cover. Great cover. I feel like it was like this beautiful kind of cerulean blue and it was a hand covered in.
multicolored sprinkles like it had been stuck to the hand am I am I remembering it right this is a cold memory okay yeah yeah and then I remember that It was about kind of like a descent into... drug use. And I think the process of getting out of that I know it was an Oprah book and Oprah then, you know, kind of retracted her recommendation because, you know, it was found out that it was. exaggerated at the least, if not. entirely fabricated, but that's about all I know. Yeah.
Yeah. And the story is quite silly to me, honestly, in the end, because it was a book that people responded so strongly to. It didn't do that well before it was an Oprah pick. And then after it was, it sold. 1.7 ish million copies in 2005. Dang. Which is, you know. remarkable for a book. Books typically do not sell in the millions. If a book sells 100,000 copies, that's extremely successful by book standards.
Yeah, you have to sell way less to get on the New York Times bestseller list. It's a shockingly low number, actually. Yeah. Yeah, which is why it's so easy to con your way on there, which is a whole other episode because some people have. Absolutely. And it was a book that people responded really strongly to. And I remember just anecdotally, there was a girl in my high school who read it and who like got it from the library.
and who underlined it so much and was like so interactive with it that she had to get them a new copy. Wow. Wow. And so yeah, so a million little pieces becomes this runaway success in 2005. And it's basically sort of and it's got a lot of line breaks, right? So it's like easy to read. It's like reading a long poem. It's almost like rupee car in a way. And it's James Fry basically describing being a no good Nick.
And someone who's been like a bad seed since he was a kid. And he only had one friend. And then she got in a train accident when she was being driven home by a football player. And then he was all alone. You know, he like faced hard time because he like hit a cop with his car. He got in a big altercation. He was violent to the police. He was facing up to.
Eight years in maximum security prison. He needed that modest mouth song. You know what I'm talking about? No. Oh, yeah. The other day, someone drove off sometimes. I was okay. Yeah, that wasn't my best rendition. But anyway, I mean, it's just shocking to me that the mid 2000s are suddenly 20 years ago. But I look at what was happening then and I'm like, yeah, I guess that feels like 20 years. Well, what are you going to do?
But just, you know, that like he was someone who had bottomed out and gotten into like some serious addiction issues, ended up in jail where he, you know. read a bunch of literature and made the best of his time because you know yeah it was selling a story of like you know after I was in jail I just read Don Quixote and everything and it's like I feel like
Jail is maybe not the best environment for reading Don Quixote. I mean, I don't know either. Hey, I guess we don't know. Oh, man, it's getting really chicken soupy in here. Oh, is it? I just mean it feels like it could be a chicken soup.
story so far what you're telling me like if it were just condensed into a couple paragraphs how come and everyone should listen to those episodes because they're very fun but like yeah how would that what would the ending to that story be if it was in the chicken suit for the soul version I mean, I think it would just go, you know, it would be like tragic accident when you're young descent into. somewhat explicit drug use.
will of yourself alone by your bootstraps you shall pull yourself up and uh Everyone else better do it, too, or they are lazy and stupid and deserve whatever bad things come to them. And that would be the chicken soup version. And that unfortunately is a thread in a million little pieces, too, because there's this sort of motif of him like fighting and winning against addiction through sheer willpower, you know, and just being like.
This guy who's like so bad that he ends up in jail all these times, but then he's also so bad that he can beat his own addiction and then write a book about it. And you can tell that I don't like that. No, no, I don't care for it. What is his DOC? What's his drug of choice in that book? I feel like all of them. All of them. Whatever's clever. Yeah, basically. And so what happens is that this.
Book is a big bestseller. It's a big bestseller partly because Oprah has picked it. It's also the first contemporary book that she's picked in a couple of years, which is interesting to remember because she for a while, I don't know if you recall. I was like laser focused on whatever Oprah was picking month by month when I was a tween and teen. And for a while she was just doing classic literature. She was like, this week we're all reading Faulkner.
Wow. I had no idea. Oh, yeah. She had a big Steinbeck phase, I think. She like picked the grapes of wrath. And I was just like, come on, Oprah, pick something fun. Pick something more like the deep end of the ocean. Yeah, but wow, I'm no, I didn't remember that at all. That's shocking to me because it always felt like some kind of like.
secret society partnership that happened with the author. It was a huge year for Steinbeck. Yeah, I mean, seriously. And you know, I'm happy to have people reading Steinbeck. Totally. Oh, yeah. And so, I mean, Oprah has an interesting role in all this because she, of course,
as you know, was a huge mover and shaker in the satanic panic. And she was one of the people whose job it was to have a daily afternoon talk show where you were competing against Donahue and everybody else. And he had to bring on. interesting people who would say sensationalistic stuff. And so you inevitably had on people who were talking about Satanism because that was one of the sensationalistic things that was happening in the 80s.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, those old over clips are stunning to watch where there's just like an ex-Satanist who's just or, you know, quote unquote ex-Satanist who will just be like, I murdered six guys. stabbed him in the chest and oprah's just like you're brave thank you for telling the truth and i'm just like are the police coming like this man just admitted to several murders he allegedly committed and we're acting like You know, he's he's giving some sort of testimony that is positive.
Because he's speaking up against it, it's bizarre. That is really fascinating, isn't it? You had all these women swarming TV, mostly women, talking about all the babies they'd killed, and no one was ever talking about the statute of limitations on baby sacrifice, which implies that people kind of knew there wasn't evidence. for this you know yeah yeah because to be clear never did we find evidence of a single baby sacrifice you know and like this is a dangerous
Country for babies. Babies die all the time preventably, but not because they're stabbed by Satanists, because we live in a society that doesn't care about their well-being or about mothers. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So Oprah's got some baggage, you know, and she's she's promoted some half-truths. And we know, you know, I mean, she she has used her kingmaking powers quite freely. She gave us Dr. Oz. She gave us Dr. Phil. gave us that wagon full of fat. Yep. I'll say it.
So anyway, that's kind of what this whole thing is about, right? Because one of the ongoing questions slash scandals of memoir is how much are you allowed to make up? If we're being honest, like you do have to make stuff up because people do not unless they're Mary Lou Hatter and they have perfect autobiographical memory than like most people.
can't remember most of what's happened to us, which is horrifying, right? But if you think about like short term memory, day to day memory, like most of what has happened to me in the last month, if I had to recall it. then I would be able to probably and I would have a better chance of remembering it long term, I think, if my understanding of memory is basically correct.
But if I don't have to think about it again or refresh it or if I don't write it down, like especially as an adult who has ingested enough fun chemicals to make my brain a little bit weaker than it used to be. I just won't remember a lot of the stuff that happens to me or a lot of the conversations that I have with people, you know, and especially if you're writing a memoir where.
people are having conversations in dialogue that aren't paraphrases, then like a lot of that has to be reconstructed. And you can do your best to reconstruct it faithfully. But at a certain point, you are going to be imagining things. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I anytime I read a memoir, I'm just like. You don't remember that. That's not what you said. I can't remember what happened to me earlier today. I have the worst memory of anyone that I know. And then I think about...
You know, I mean, obviously, there's so many problems with like evidence in the justice system. But I just think about like when you're getting. police interviewed you're like dragged in and they're like where were you on the 9th of october and you're just like i don't know i have no idea and and if i tell you what i think You'll think I'm lying later. I would just I just it's so funny when you watch true crime documentaries or whatever, and people are never like.
Babe, I don't know what I was doing. Are you kidding me? Like, what am I, a recall robot? But, you know, I appreciate when people write memoirs, but as someone who has definitely tried to write. Memorically, you know, it's... It's creative writing. Let's just say that. Well, and also to speak of our baggage, you and I both have MFAs. You have an MFA in poetry. I have an MFA in fiction. The rumors are true. Both of us decided memoir was too hard.
How do you feel about truth in poetry? Ooh, great question. I think what's nice about poetry is it's kind of an impressionist version of truth, and it strikes on a level. beyond fact and beyond like even storytelling it's something that Just kind of again, we know rises up from the unified field recently popularized by David Lynch. But it is just this you get to go with your subconscious. And this is my version of poetry. There are many kinds of poetry, but you get to be guided.
by something else. Other than your kind of thinking. mind other than your intelligence or your I mean ego we could call it I've been like really into meditation and listening to like Ram Dass and shit so I'm on I'm on that level right now but I think you know something else takes over and it doesn't really like Truth is no longer something that is based in.
In like what happened, it's based in what feels true. And I think that that's really nice, but I don't think it's good when you're trying to impart wisdom to the masses about something that happened to you, allegedly. Right. Yeah. And then there's the thing of like, why do certain types of writing have value allegedly? And with poetry, like,
I don't think anyone has ever claimed that the most important thing about poetry is that it happened to somebody. Although by definition it did because to write about a feeling is to have the feeling. Yeah. Not that all poetry is about feelings, but you know, it is famous for feelings. Well, I think what's nice about poetry is like a lot of times storytelling is amazing in poetry. I just think that the story doesn't have to be anything other than like a felt memory that you get to.
kind of, I mean, manipulate is a strong word, but you get to retool to be an experience that you can imagine having. And so it's a wonderful exercise in empathy as well. But again, I think. It can. I've seen lots of examples of that going badly where people put themselves in other people's shoes in a way that feels.
A bit problematic. Well, I believe we're going to get into that area as well. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. But how about fiction? What do you have? What do you think about fiction? I mean, I love fiction and I. miss writing it and I even when I haven't written fiction truly or seriously in years I always have sort of little scenarios in my head you know that are just kind of ways of thinking about the world and sort of characters and scenarios.
And I think similarly to you, I think that like some of my happiest memories are of just kind of being in that place when you're writing and when words are sort of happening. and you feel like they're happening through you, and you're just kind of letting them happen. And it feels like there's just a part of you that's speaking without resistance, and you don't have to think about what you're going to say next, which is what I'm used to.
And daily life. And it's what you're incredible at is like. You know, you speak from the fucking unified field. I'll say it once. I'll say it a thousand times. Thank you for saying that. I need to remember that. And from my diaphragm when I can remember. Yeah, of course. Of course. It's hard.
But right, I think fiction is like a way of accessing the sides of yourself that you don't get to be in normal life. I mean, fiction and fantasy are connected. And, you know, all kinds of fantasy, I think, are sort of.
the mind. And so I think there are, and yeah, we have gotten, I mean, what also comes to mind regarding Oprah's, a few years ago, we had American Dirt right on the eve of the pandemic, which was, of course, a white woman writing a novel that was sort of predicated on the idea that it was this wonderful you know, emotionally authentic story of a Mexican woman and her child who are trying to flee and get across the border because they survived.
shootout by narcos at a quinceañera. Like, I didn't write the stupid thing. And it was such a stupid book. And I actually listened to the audio book of it just because I wanted to confirm. And I was like, yeah, this is really, really bad.
Sounds pretty bad. So this thing of like, I think writing is often like doing more for the writer than it is for the reader. And it becomes really unfortunate when we publish and heavily promote something that's doing a lot more for the writer than it is for the reader. Because also Janine Cummins had talked about. Like her father had died suddenly and she wrote the book kind of in while grieving that and going through, I think, pretty extreme grief. And the only parts of it that really feel.
uh real to me not that i can judge the reality of the rest of it but you know a lot of other people uh did and wrote great pieces about how wildly inaccurate it was but like the part about losing a relative and like grieving a husband or a father did feel real. And I can imagine, you know, a world where you need to write that, but you have to do it like as a character who feels really distant from you in order to do it, which again, it's like.
great, do what you have to do, but then you can't be getting your mortgage from that. It's really easy to create harm through nonfiction because, I mean, A, we've said already, and I mean, there's not fact-checking happening, and then there is this... I mean, maybe it's broken down a little bit now, but I think there's a general trust that if it's in a book, unless it's very clearly ridiculous, like some kind of Glenn Beck book or whatever, you know, it's like if there's something in a book.
You can have faith that it's true. And I know that I fall like when when I'm doing stuff for American Hysteria, I'll always try to find like the most academic book that I can because I trust academics. But then even so, I will try to double check their facts. And there are, I mean, I would say. I mean, let's say one out of 20 times I check something and it's not true. It's actually not true. And it takes a long time to break through all of that. But like.
You know, there is a trust that we have and we should obviously trust academics. You're my fucking heroes. All of you academics out there. But also trust them as people who are working within a flawed system and who are sometimes forced to hurry and who sometimes will just miss. Translate something or rely on a mistranslation or cite the wrong page. And rely on someone before them. Rely on an academic before them the same way I'm relying on them. And it's like.
Already difficult because history itself is nothing but a story that we tell. That's something that I have learned again and again through making the show. And I know you've learned it, too. It's like. You know, you can go back and we use. Sources like newspapers dot com. But then we go back and say, well, the newspapers love to just make shit up constantly back then. But then you get into like, well, I'm still telling the story that people were hearing. Right. So it's like.
I don't know. History is a weird thing. And I think memoirs. exactly the same and that it's your personal history and you're trying to reconstruct. this thing out of like these handful of facts that you remember and you need to make it entertaining enough for people to be compelled to read it and continue on. But, you know, through that.
A lot of scary things can actually happen. And maybe you don't. I mean, usually you don't mean for them to happen unless you're, you know, Lawrence Pazder making Michelle remembers so that he can marry. this poor woman and go on a book tour yeah and then also the extent to which the people who publish these have to hoax themselves right because at a certain point there's a lot of money tied up in them and they're too big to fail which is why I think we should have more books.
that pay authors less money, but more authors. And then we don't have to have $8 million books that if one of them tanks, then the whole system doesn't work. Yeah, good call. Listen up, Spotify. Yeah. Yeah. You've never been profitable. OK, so so back to James Fry. So very famously, in 2006, Oprah. draws a line in the sand and says, James Fry, you lied to me. And I have never been bothered by anyone lying to me before in the 20 years I've been on TV, but I'm bothered by it now.
Yes. And I had trouble finding the clip of this, but I did find a transcript on Oprah.com. And so I think that we should do some dramatic reading together. Ready. Would you like to be James Fry or would you like to be Oprah? I'll be James. I'll be James. Okay. Oprah says, James Fry is here and I have to say it is difficult for me to talk to you because I feel really do.
But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers. I think it's such a gift to have millions of people to read your work, and that bothers me greatly. So now, as I sit here today, I don't know what is true, and I don't know what isn't.
So first of all, I want to start with the smoking gun report titled The Man Who Conned Oprah. And I want to know, were they right? And for some background, Oprah's talking about a report by... A website called The Smoking Gun, which I think most people at the time knew for being where you went to see pictures of people's mugshots.
And it did an incredibly detailed investigative report where they basically like went county by county through Ohio trying to verify this alleged arrest record that James Fry had. And I'll tell you in a little bit what they found, but it was not, it was different from what he said. So Chelsea, you be James. Sounds like kind of a fun road trip, by the way. Okay. Yes. Okay.
I think most of what they wrote was pretty accurate. Absolutely. Okay. I think they did a good job detailing some of the discrepancies between some of the actual facts of the event. What they said was that you lied about the length of time that you spent in jail. How long were you in jail? Smoking gun was right about that. I was in jail for a few hours. Not 87 days? Correct. Um, let's skip ahead a little bit.
Okay. And then we're going down to after the picture, right under the picture of him with his like bottom teeth sticking out. Why did you lie? Why did you have to lie about the time you spent in jail? Why did you do that? I think one of the coping mechanisms I developed was sort of this image of myself that was greater probably than. Not probably. That was greater than what I actually was.
In order to get through the experience of the addiction, I thought of myself as being tougher than I was and badder than I was, and it helped me cope. When I was writing the book, instead of being as introspective as I should have been, I clung to that image. And did you cling to that image because that's how you wanted to see yourself? Or did you cling to that image because that would make a better book?
How much of the book is fabricated? Not very much. I mean, all the people in the book are real. Since the smoking gun report came out, two people who were in the facility with me have come forward. Yes, they came forward. I saw that New York Times report where they say many of the things that you described did happen, but maybe they didn't happen the way you said they happened, that there were encounters with counselors, but not a knockdown drag out.
So all of those encounters, were there the big fights and the chairs and you're a Mr. Bravado tough guy, were you making that up or was that your idea of who you are? I don't think I describe at any point a knock-down, drag-out fight at any point in the book. He definitely does. The two confrontations that occur in the book, neither of them is described as lasting longer than 10 seconds.
I mean, I think if you put 25 to 30 drug addicted and alcoholic men in a confined space, there are going to be confrontations. So you're saying that your description of those confrontations were true? Yeah. I acted in defense of you. And as I said, my judgment was clouded because so many people seem to have gotten so much out of it. But now I feel that you conned us all. Do you? I don't feel like I conned everyone. You don't? No. Why?
Because I still think the book is about drug addiction and alcoholism, and nobody's disputing that I was a drug addict and an alcoholic. It's about the battle to overcome that. No, but I remember when you were here the last time in the after show, a woman stood up and said, you know, after reading this book and seeing you coming through what you came through, the way you did and you having the attitude that you did makes me feel that I can do it too.
I think you presented a false person. Oh my God, sorry. I'm scrolling down and seeing this picture of him with obvious, like, tears in his eyes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. How is the scene feeling to do? I feel like there's more to this story than meets the eye. So I'm excited to hear more. Yeah. Well, we're going to get into the smoking gun report in a second. Do you remember how this episode was like a moment? It feels like people were kind of...
Maybe not quite an awe of Oprah, but something, you know? Yeah, I think I think it's because, you know, I mean, I feel like she did the kind of like. throw your writer under the bus type of scenario. Although I'm not saying that he did or did not deserve that or whatever, but it is also one of those things where she... is acting, I think, less from a place of of genuine feeling and more from her place of self-preservation and trying to make sure that she doesn't look bad for the fact that she...
you know, put this book out as one of her recommendations. And of course, I don't know, that might be an unkind... read okay i don't think it's unkind i mean i i do i agree because i also think there's like an element you know because this book was made up yeah And it's interesting to me that like the thing that he chose to lie about was basically having spent all this time in jail.
And being like a hardened criminal. When in fact it turns out that the only time he spent in jail. Which the smoking gun unearthed. Is that he. was arrested for driving under the influence and spent a few hours in county lockup, but then was released to his parents because he had chicken pox. No, stop. And I will show you his mugshot now. Wow. I've spent a few hours in jail. I should write a memoir. There you go. Let's see. So yeah, just scroll down a little bit. You'll know when you see it.
Wow. Okay. He A is kind of hot. So like, I'm just gonna put that out there. I was just going to say, does this look like some UVA lacrosse player you would have hacked a sack with? Oh, absolutely. He would have definitely been in my class and been like talking about how wrestling is a violent ballet, which really happened. Boy, it is a violent ballet. It was one of the most beautiful moments I had as a as a teacher at UVA. But he.
is like mad looking, you know, kind of looking beyond the camera. Yeah, because he's so itchy. Yeah, he's so itchy. And he's just like... Fucking covered in pox, man. They're all over his face. I like that the little description under the photo says a chicken pox laden fray. I love that. You know, so yeah, he ain't happy. But I guess he's going home. Yeah, because they didn't want all the other people in jail to get chicken pox. I guess so. You know, Sarah, I've never had chicken pox.
Oh shit. They tried to give it to me when I was a kid, just couldn't get it. And then I got vaccinated. So. Oh, nice. Take that RFK. God, I, you know, not to bring that up. Sorry, everyone. I know you're trying to disappear into a narrative that isn't. reality but yes let's go back to the glory days of 2006 when you couldn't buy good jeans to save your life Sarah, you still can't buy good jeans. I know I never will. It's never going to have to have them made for me by Levi Strauss himself.
So here's kind of a poetic little smoking gun breakdown of James Fry's actual jail stint and how it compares to how he wrote about it. Fry was issued two traffic tickets, one for driving under the influence and another for driving without a license and a separate misdemeanor criminal summons for having that open container of Pabst. Pabst. How many Pabst did he have to drink? Eighteen. Yep.
He was directed to appear in mayor's court in 10 days. Fry was then released on a 733 cash bond, according to the report, which was written 4am on October 25th. So Fry's time in custody did not exceed five hours. Wow. to review there was no patrolman struck with a car there was no urgent call for backup there was no rebuffed request to exit the car there was no you want me out then get me out there was no fucking pigs taunt
There were no swings at cops. There was no billy club beatdown. There was no kicking and screaming. There was no mayhem. There was no attempted riot inciting. There were no 30 witnesses. There was no 0.29 blood alcohol test. There was no crack. There was no assault with a deadly weapon, assaulting an officer of the law, felony DUI, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest.
driving without insurance, attempted incitement of a riot, possession of a narcotic with intent to distribute or felony mayhem. Well, Sarah, I think we have a poser alert. Poser alert. Oh, last paragraph. Okay. And though he would later vividly write about being consumed by an internal rage that he named like a pet, Fry was somehow able to keep the fury. and check on that drunken October night in Granville. As the patrolman reported, he was polite and cooperative at all times.
Fry's arrest was as mundane as they got, as vanilla as the arrestee himself, a neatly dressed frat boy five months out of school and plastered on cheap beer. Ooh. scathing I really love that I love how it's like you've never been in jail
No. It's interesting, right? Because a lot of people have been in jail. It's famously kind of a problem in the United States that so many of our citizens... have served time in jail or prison and therefore don't have full rights as citizens because of the laws that we've written about that.
So like, why not just publish a memoir by someone who'd been to jail? Why was this section appealing prospect? Or like write about being a drug addict. A lot of times drug addicts, especially when they're white, don't go to jail. So. You know, I don't know. It just feels like that detail was really or not even detail that like whole thread through the book was not necessary to tell.
a compelling story. Like, I don't think it's more interesting to hear about someone. I mean, famously, it's less interesting to be in jail than it is to not be in jail. So it's really, yeah, it's really weird. what a good point right only someone Who isn't in jail would think it must be interesting in there. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it's interesting, but, you know, it's not. It just in terms of like.
memoir but it's not you know like the place where all the good material is hiding no no Because you're stopped, you know, and in prison more specifically, or, you know, jail too, because people spend a lot of time awaiting, you know. court proceedings that are jammed up but like it's where you know your life's ability to move forward is taken away from you basically yeah yeah absolutely so cosplaying that is uh i don't know
Kind of uncool. Yeah. Yes. To put it mildly, definitely uncool. This gets into one of the books I was looking at about this topic, which is. Impostors, Literary Hoaxes and Cultural Authenticity by Christopher L. Miller, which looks at American hoaxes and also some French hoaxes. Love it. Let me read you. So Miller writes, a hoax is a metafiction, a fiction about a fiction. It is designed not merely to tell a story, but to weave a lie around that story.
A lie about the status of the story, its origins, its authenticity, and mostly its authorship. It is the lie that constitutes the hoax. A story of someone else's culture honestly told by an author identified as him or herself is not a hoax. to be truly a hoax a literary ruse must fool its readers and in the best cases fool every one of them at least for a time A hoax that fools no one is merely a game. A hoax that tricks everyone is potentially very scandalous and very instructive.
When successful, an intercultural hoax reveals preconceived notions about culture and disrupts the concepts of authenticity and genuineness that readers so often seek in representations of, quote, minority cultures. Each of the case studies in this book reflects a deliberate attempt to deceive to lie about the authorship of a text. These authors want their texts and the persona of the author to pass as something they are not.
This often involves a tremendous amount of planning and subterfuge, sometimes even danger and legal jeopardy. Why do they bother? Intercultural literary hoaxes are almost always premised on inequality, and most of them, in their creative pretense, cross a boundary from a realm of greater privilege to one of lesser privilege.
Why does hoaxing almost always follow that trajectory rather than its opposite? Minority literatures and cultures, broadly defined, occupy a special place in the world of hoaxes. They are particularly susceptible to impostures. Cultures deemed less able to represent themselves are often the target of hoaxes perpetrated by writers who come from the literate majority or Western side. The essence of the minority is tapped and extracted, synthesized and fake.
The majority's perception is that minority and foreign cultures need to be explained to the reading book by majority, and this dynamic has far-reaching cultural and economic ripple effects. The inquiring majority mind wants to know about the minority, which is construed as different, distant, peculiar, inscrutable, mysterious, and perhaps in need of help.
This is true whether the minority is an American use of culture right next door, as in Go Ask Alice, a nun cloistered against her will, as in Law... as in la religieuse, urban ethnic minorities in the United States, as in famous all over town and love and consequences, or in France. as in lila di sa and vive metu, I don't know, or distant rural Africans, as in l'enfant noir.
Tell me what you think about that. What I'm hearing is like You know, you're not generally going to see someone from a lesser degree of privilege writing a hoax memoir about like being. some sordid rich person in a mansion in Manhattan, right? It's like, it's more... That people are cosplaying as someone with a minority status and kind of being a tourist into that world because, you know, the book buying public.
is going to be interested in what is novel to them. And that is probably going to not be necessarily a tale of some middle class. White woman taking her kids to school. It's going to be a tale of woe and a tale of.
distinctness that they can't really really uh experience themselves I don't know and so it's like and yet people are like wanting that story to be told to them from a peer almost even if it's subconscious right like it's like right it's like they don't want to actually listen to the the voices of experience because almost like that's too uncomfortable it's like it needs to be passed through this filter of
of sameness that then they can process the information. And I think this happens on a subconscious level, right? Like, I think one of the best things about people is that we are pretty curious, you know, and like we want to know about each other and we want to know things. And I think often the desires that we have as people.
are better than what media wants to provide us with. Because if you're playing a game of not what is the most interesting, but what is the most likely to earn me the profit that I need to offer shareholders ultimately, because publishing is an industry. then you end up privileging something that's maybe like only half interesting, you know, because it's like it has to be similar enough to what succeeded before.
in order to be the kind of thing that you can sell to the people above you who have to approve it, basically, or to make it seem like a sure thing. We end up actually with, I mean, I would argue that a million little pieces and a couple of the other books I'm going to tell you about today kind of.
demonstrate a trend where actual curiosity is sort of funneled into books that are destined to not really answer any of the questions that people bring to them because they're also being imagined by people who weren't there. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that quote. Love that. This book sounds great. So shout out. Right. Yeah. Well, and so another of the books that Miller references in that list is called Love and Consequences. And I happen.
to have it here. And I wonder if you remember this one. Okay, so this was... A scandal that happened a couple years after the A Million Little Pieces scandal, so in 2008, and it was kind of overshadowed by it, I think. And basically, a woman published a memoir about being... Part indigenous and being raised by a black family and foster care in Los Angeles and being a gang member and selling drugs and spending her first.
real money on a burial plot for herself and wouldn't you know she turned out to be just an episcopalian girl from sherman oaks oh my god i that is like so iconic though to be like The first thing I bought with my money, not a CD from Fred Meyer. No, my own funeral plot. And here she is. This is her like, I need to look like I was in a gang headshot, but I'm definitely a girl named.
Margaret from Sherman Oaks. And I'm like perpetually like 15 is what that face says to me. Yep. Okay. All right. So. This came out and the half-life of this was a lot quicker because it was out for about a week. It generated interest. There was a New York Times piece about her. She was living in Eugene. Oregon mentioned Eugene shout out all you freaking hippies
I love you. And a relative of hers, similar to the Rachel Dolezal story not too long after, another white woman of the Pacific Northwest who could not get it together. Wait, who's that? Just kidding. No, I'm just kidding. I know, Rach. Of course you do. Making Washington look bad for 10 or 15 years now. But for people who don't know, do you want to jog our memory? The long and short of it, I guess, is that Rachel Dolezal...
Was a white woman who pretended to be a black woman to the point where she was part of the maybe state or city chapter of the NAACP. And then it came out later that she was. Yeah. I mean, there's a documentary about it. I don't really. I mean, God, it's like. Culture is just boom, boom, boom, boom. Who's Rachel Dolezal? I don't even know if I remember anymore. Well, there's just a lot of hoaxers to keep up with. It's kind of one of the only growth industries left in this country, you know?
Not to blame the economy on all of it. Yeah. Yeah. And like, God bless you if you're a hoaxer out there doing innocent hoaxes. I feel like they don't really exist anymore. But give me a Blair Witch, please. And so the love and consequences scandal feels similar to the Rachel Dolezal scandal, too, because it's like. A white woman who and when this breaks and after her, you know, a relative of hers contacts the press and is like, hey, none of this happened. And the book is published.
Is not true. Her response is like, well, I was hanging out at Starbucks and I was talking to teenagers who were gang members when I was writing this book. And I just wanted to tell their stories through my book and say. that they'd happen to me, and that way people would care more about the teens. And it's like, I don't even think you think that. She doesn't fucking think that. That fucking caramel frappuccino ass 15 year old. No, I mean, it's.
I think that that's a really like... easy way to try to get out of what you've done is to to like be like I was shining a light yeah and it's also the most kind of like AmeriCorps volunteer kind of justification and like... You know, to be like, yes, I... seem to have made a good amount of money from and it was all lies and all
cultural appropriation, but it was for the greater good. What's probably true is just that there's a basic human need for attention. And sometimes if you find something that... gets it for you. You just don't want to make yourself stop, especially when there's money involved. But then what that amounts to is like Creating a fiction that allows you like, I mean, the way white women fail upwards is incredible, you know, like the number of kind of like nonprofit leadership roles and.
like the amount of power that you might end up with in terms of like state or city or national policy or like the amount of influence that you might end up having on legislation or just the way people see reality because of fraud. is stunning like it's almost like if you're the kind of person who is sort of I don't know, young and dumb or grown up and dumb or sort of self-centered enough to perpetuate a hoax simply.
Because you're getting something out of it or because it's kind of fun, you know, which I and I think most people are coming at it for with sort of more psychological baggage than that. But even if you are, then like. The problem comes from the fact that we're all so deeply connected and we seem to be getting more connected all the time. Yeah. If the impulse is. That you want to like help a group of people. I think there are like.
help them materially, like not write a book where you are thinking like, now people will understand this minority group. Like because I'm writing this fictionalized version. Because of what I invented. It's a pretty see-through tactic to get out of what you've done. And also it's stunning to me that people looked at this. woman that you've showed me a photo of and said, yes, hardened gang member, 100%. What gang was she in? Was she like, was it one of the big...
One of the big two? One of the big two. Do we not? Yes. Well, I'll read the flap to you, okay? in an unforgettable voice that we've, 2495, by the way, in an unforgettable voice that we've stunning forthright narration together with the distinctive rhythmic slang of the street. Oh, fuck. Margaret Beebe. Margaret B. Jones brings us movingly into the world of her youth, the world of gangs and poverty, but also hope and survival.
to create a memoir like no other. At age five, Margaret B. Jones was removed from her suburban California home and put into foster care. At age eight, after many relocations, She landed in a foster home in South Central Los Angeles, the region of gang ridden neighborhoods made infamous by the Rodney King riots. Thank you so much for that. A part white. part Native American girl. Jones grew up in the predominantly Black community in an all-Black household. run by the formidable Big Mom.
oh my god a stern single overworked woman Raising four grandchildren for their absent mother. Wow. This could not have been constructed by a white person. No. Using only cliches. No. So authentic. This is a good time to point out that publishing like so many other industries within media broadly in the United States is extremely white. And if you were a white person who's making stuff up because you saw.
a John Singleton movie one time on cable, then like your editor probably won't notice because she probably also went to Barnard, you know? Yeah, very true. Very true. And was it successful? No, because the plug got pulled on it before, like they stopped promoting it within a week, basically. Okay, okay. Which is, you know, nice.
That is good. Good job, everyone, I guess. Better job. We'll say better job, everyone. Better job. And then let's look at another book from the immediately post-James Fry years, which also... like within about a week or two of love and consequences also was unveiled as a fraud. But I think this. Should have been a bigger story. And this is, of course, Misha, a memoir of the Holocaust years, which is about, you know, this one vaguely. But I know that this has happened before.
Fake Holocaust memoirs. Yes. Yeah. And so this is a book by a woman who did interestingly did not attempt to write a book like the way that this. Starts off, it's a little bit Michelle coded because she was just this older woman who is a Belgian immigrant and. I think the Boston area, who belonged to a local synagogue and who it was kind of known in the community because she gave talks locally, had survived the Holocaust as a child by being raised by a pack of wolves.
So we've got a lot going on in there. Yeah. There's a great article about this story and how it was unveiled as fiction by Blake Eskin that was in Boston Magazine in 2008. It's called The Girl Who Cried Wolf. Great title. Tragedy opens up more room for lying, unfortunately, because it's... Nobody wants to say that somebody isn't telling the truth about how they survived something truly terrible.
Which is also how separately, you know, we had there's a great documentary called The Woman Who Wasn't There about a woman who faked surviving September 11th. It's a great documentary and wild story. Yeah. Yeah. And so you have. inevitably people who want to align themselves with the tragedy in order to get kind of an outpouring of emotional support, I think, which is, it seems like what was going on there to sort of exist in a special category of identity that they get to have.
as a survivor, like not even of the regular traumas that a lot of people go through, but of something that instantly is a shorthand that will tell people. to treat them with care or to give them more attention or something like that. Something like our empathy and desire to believe can be exploited does say that we have empathy and a desire to believe. So it is like it is on one hand like nice that it happens, but obviously on the other hand, it's like.
incredibly disturbing and upsetting that not only that someone can come in and become a charlatan of this tragedy, but that we don't have the space to question that because. of the implication of what would happen to those who are telling the truth when we start to question. So it is just like this very dark. piece of the Venn diagram, if that makes any sense. But yeah, it is just a huge bummer because it speaks to both positive and negative parts of...
of being a person who wants to believe the stories that we're told by people. And we want to believe that people are honest and we want to believe that. Someone wouldn't do something like that. And it is, I think, kind of baffling for us to understand that someone might do that. But then on the other hand... You and I have talked a lot about
The desire to make larger your pain, like through kind of the metaphor of something like Michelle remembers like Michelle was in pain and she wanted or, you know, I mean, there were forces that were manipulating her as well. But like. When we're in pain, if it's the regular quote unquote type of pain, it doesn't feel like that's expressing what it feels like to be in pain. So we want to like blow it up through. You know, we want we want to be like, OK.
I'm lonely or like I feel like I was hurt by my parents. So I'm going to like, you know, blow that up to like. my parents hurt me because they were Satanists who were like sacrificing a horse in my room or, you know, but it does come from like a sad place still. Like the hoaxer is looking for something through the hoax. And I think it's more than money a lot of the time. But, you know, it's complicated. It's just there's very complicated stuff and ultimately the, you know, the ends.
do not justify the means by any stretch of the imagination. But, you know, it doesn't mean that people aren't. And the extent to which people can hoax themselves throughout their lives, you know, is really something. And I do think that often the best con artists do not have a plan and are able to lie with no tension because they basically believe what they're saying, you know, because like.
You know, Trump basically lies all the time, but he also has such a fragile ego that he's allergic to the truth. Yeah. Well, so the story of how Misha got unmasked is interesting, too. It took like 10 years. Like this one was out for a while. And part of it is because it was published by a small press, Mount Ivy Press.
Makes a point of mentioning had previously published titles, including weddings for complicated families, main dish salads and gigolos, the secret lives of men who service women. I do. Do you remember Deuce Bigelow, male gigolo? Yes, I do. Yeah, I watch that movie a lot. That's all I ever think about when someone says gigolo. I know, me too. So Misha comes out in 1997, and it comes out partly because the publisher of Mount Ivy Press, the woman who brought us main dish salads, Jane Daniel.
Really pursues Misha to try and get her to make it into a book and hires a ghostwriter and then finishes the ghostwriting herself and... In ways that most readers don't imagine publishers do, but which they do sometimes. Here's from people as it's going to print who express doubt about it. Like she brings it to an academic who's an expert on.
child holocaust survival stories and who's like i mean it's not that details are wrong it's that the whole thing appears to be a fantasy but it still is published and Again, like it might not have been unveiled. fake memoir, if the publisher hadn't uh withheld money from misha and her ghostwriter oh okay and so the year after it's published the ghostwriter files a suit alleging breach of contract and
The rights for the book end up frozen, basically, until the lawsuit proceeds to its conclusion. And so then there's drama because Misha and her husband, who are elderly and kind of, you know, living in the Boston area.
are telling people that they don't have any money and they need a place to stay. And so they move in with this random woman for a couple years. And it turns out that they apparently do have money in the bank, but they are... saving it for something and saying that they need all these profits from the Misha memoir, but they can't get them yet. And Misha does eventually win her suit, but...
This is ruinous for Jane Daniel, the publisher, because the court tells Jane to award Misha like several million dollars, like more money than she has from her main dish salads money. Then she starts to think, hey, what about those people who said this memoir was fake, this memoir that's now ruining my life? Maybe it is. Yep. The details of this are like, it's horrible, but the details are...
Kind of a delight because she starts a blog Jane does called bestseller exclamation point where she says she's writing a bestseller in real time on this blog. And it's a bestseller about proving that Misha was a fraud. And incredibly, because she is writing this.
seemingly you know like the kind of blog that you would stumble across in the mid 2000s and be like oh the internet sure is weird and then move on a genealogist happens to come across it and is like Yeah, I could do some genealogy on this one. So the genealogist whose name is Sharon Sargent, she lives in Waltham. She contacts other genealogists and is able to find documentation showing that Misha was in fact.
in 1941 when she was allegedly adopted by wolves and also walked from Belgium to Ukraine. And I feel like the logic is that Seven is maybe an age when you could walk across Europe, but four is certainly too young. Yeah. And this investigation does uncover documents showing that Misha was enrolled in an elementary school in the fall of 1943. Again, when she was supposed to be walking across Europe with the wolves.
And the wolves just walked with her, huh? That's the thing. We don't know what wolves do. Then we would be able to spot hoax memoirs better. Yeah, they're pretty great. I mean, they mind their own business. That's what's pretty great about them. It's a myth, but I don't know if they raise humans either. So I mean, and so there's pressure coming from another side because the book was also optioned to be made into a movie, a French language movie at about the same time.
So that upped its profile in Europe, which... led to more people asking questions about it. Yeah. And then there's a final bombshell unearthed by a journalist named Mark Metepeningen, which I'm sure I didn't say right, who writes for a newspaper called Le Soir in Belgium. who uncovers that Misha, aka Monique's parents, were members of the Belgian resistance, and they did orphan her, and that apparently her mother...
you know, they were captured by Nazis. Her mother never gave anybody up, but that her father did. Her father named names and died a traitor, basically. And so when she's confronted with this, she says, yes. My name is Monique DeWall, but I've wanted to forget that since I was four years old.
She says the story of Misha is not actual reality, but it was my reality, my way of surviving. I ask forgiveness for all those who feel betrayed, but I beg them to put themselves in the face of a four-year-old girl who had lost everything, who had to survive, who fell into an abyss of solitude. And to understand that I never wanted anything other than to ease my suffering. Which I believe that, but also don't. Publish it and don't make it into a movie and put it in theaters.
That's a very compelling story. The truth that you just said was very, like, that sounds like a memoir all its own. There's no reason to involve the wolves. We don't have to bring the wolves into this. I just think it's so wild when I hear about these people who create these hoax memoirs. Do you have no anxiety? I would just be like, like the anxiety is firing on the wrong. The anxiety that I feel making American hysteria that I might get just. the tiniest fact incorrect.
I the anxiety that I feel just making a show in which I'm trying to approximate some historical truth versus. Just inventing a Holocaust story or like some atrocity propaganda is just so it's just beyond any comprehension that I have outside of morality, just in terms of like.
I don't know, the stories we tell about ourselves get so ingrained in who we believe we are. And that I don't think that the truth is inaccessible. But I think that, yeah, the human capacity to lie to ourselves is like underrated in terms of how strong it can be. But this idea that like you have this wound that needs to be addressed and you're presented with a way to have people understand by shorthand.
that you've experienced trauma and you need help for it. And like, I don't really blame Michelle in the same way that I blame the Holocaust memoirists because she, but then also she did. Not on purpose, but she did really help destroy our legal systems.
She didn't lie about being part of... of a genocide but she did invent one to have been involved in and then created the illusion that something had been there that wasn't you know so it's just I I don't know but I do feel like if we cared more about individual trauma there wouldn't be such a need to write These stupid fake memoirs. Because our cultures become so trauma focused. There is an incentive. to present your trauma in a public forum. And there is probably even a greater incentive.
to expand that trauma into a narrative that is consumable. And I think, again, what is at the root of all of this is like the capitalistic need to package your trauma into something that people want to consume and so it needs to be big it's just like the newspapers you know it's just like
We need to sensationalize this story in a way that it becomes so overblown that people are desperate to know more. Right. And I think that that, you know, and this isn't an excuse to any of those people, but I just think that it. the reality of American culture and that we're always going to pay attention to things that are the biggest and the loudest.
and the most frightening and the strangest. That's why we love firecrackers. Yeah, I mean, we love it. I think that's A, who humans are, but I think it's very much who. Americans are and, you know, the allure of a good story. can have like really dire consequences, right? Because we're just. I'm you and I are the same way. Like we're hungry for stories. Luckily, we have something in us that blocks us from creating false ones. I hope we'll see. There's lots of time left in our lives.
So far, fingers crossed. Covered in sprinkles. Yeah, it's a great cover. But, you know, I just think it is we are incentivized, whether it be by social media attention or monetization of another variety. to exaggerate our lives and we don't need to exaggerate our lives like everybody's trauma is valid even if we take the word trauma away which has become its own like nightmare of a term. I know, it's like emotional later. Yes, it's just like...
You just you hurt. You have pain. You're experiencing pain. The reality that we're working our way towards, I hope culturally, is this idea that like. You can experience trauma just from something that seems very small to anyone who's looking at it from the outside. And it doesn't have to be a good story and it doesn't have to be a bestseller.
And it's still enough to affect you very deeply. And the fact that you don't have a bestseller type story doesn't mean that you don't have a right to need help, basically. Yeah. And I mean, it almost brings me back to thinking about our conversation about poetry and that like poetry does allow you to express. pain in a way that doesn't have to have a narrative behind it and you get to have impressions right of pain you get to have like
I don't know. It's just in order to be good, poetry doesn't need a tidy narrative. And I think that's why it gets. to a truth that other forms of writing can't, even if it's a truth that you can't understand intellectually. Right. It's a felt truth. And I do feel like the fake memoir is in a way like understanding that something. can feel true and can even feel truer than what you've been through and again it's like yeah keep that in your journal
Keep it in your journal, babe. Yeah. Don't publish it. At least publish it under fiction. But like, no, people are probably going to be mad if it's a story that you didn't live in or trying to tell instead of like. helping someone else tell a story who actually lived through it. But I'd still rather you do it as fiction. Or poetry. Or, you know, or a zine. A zine, yeah.
And again, it's like it's never about making excuses for people that do fucked up shit, but it is like always more important, I think, to take the individual out of it and say what in our culture promotes. This type of hoax, like, why are we so ready to make this hoax happen? Because a hoax doesn't happen in a vacuum. That's for sure. It needs conditions and it needs. a structure for it to grow, like it needs a house.
If it's like a vine, it needs a house to grow on. That's poetry. Yeah, that's poetry, baby. That's poetry, baby. It's the Himalayan blackberry on the abandoned gas station of life. that's it that is what a hoax memoir yeah well and it also occurs to me that like Americans are obsessed with stories of people who are lucky and who survived the impossible. And our demand for that means that our taste is for stories of the impossible.
American way of life where if you don't do it yourself, If you don't like somehow overcome all of the systems that exist. magnificent willpower alone then you're not worthy of our empathy yeah really Well, let's I want to close with just one last little book. And this is different from our others. This is a book that was kind of a sensation about 100 years ago and has since been forgotten.
Well, really an author who has since been forgotten, whose name is Opal Whiteley. Have you ever heard of her? No, but I think that's a lovely name. Here is a New Yorker article about Opal by Michelle Dean, whose writing I always love. Her life had the flavor of the apocryphal from the start, from the time when Opal arrived at the University of Oregon's campus in Eugene in 1916. I wasn't planning for this to be Eugene-themed, but it is.
Another Eugene. Eugene mentioned she was often seen chasing butterflies around and perched in trees reading. She was 18, but she stood under five feet with olive skin and long, dark braids. Despite her penchant for unfashionable clothing and odd behavior, she was something of a celebrity in Oregon, where she'd grown up in a small town called Cottage Grove. From the age of 12, she'd been traveling all over the state giving well-attended lectures about the natural world.
a subject on which she was largely self-taught. The press called her a genius. She called herself the Sunshine Fairy. Her popularity stemmed from her avoidance of the dryness of science. She was more of a charismatic mystic. The wife of the president of the university told People that she had once come upon Opal crouched on the ground singing what seemed to be hymns to some earthworms. So Opal, when she's 22 and 1919, she goes to... the offices of the Atlantic Monthly in Boston.
So Opal comes to the Atlantic Monthly. She's written a book called The Fairyland Around Us that she wants to publish. They're like, maybe not. But the editor-in-chief, whose name is Ellery Sedgwick. says that there was something very young and eager and fluttering about this woman like a bird in a thicket. He asks if she has a diary to publish and she's like, for sure. I kept one when I was
a six-year-old, but my foster sibling tore it up. And so I would need some time to reconstruct it. And so he puts her in his mother's house to spend nine months reconstructing her childhood diary. And it's published and it becomes a sensation.
And, you know, one of the questions is, was she reconstructing it or was she just writing it? And also, how much does it matter since she's not claiming to have survived the Holocaust? Yeah, I mean, whatever. Go for it. I don't care about that. Yeah, it's like... My diary from when I was I have the earliest diary I have is from when I was like. maybe eight and all it is is like me creating acronyms about boys that I thought I was in love with which is just like
You know, like I-L-J, like I love Jake. And then I would just write the acronym. So, you know, I mean, a really riveting read. Yeah, very subtle as well. What's interesting is that it's like it's really it's it's very palimpsestic, right? Because she's saying that she wrote this diary as a six year old. She reconstructed it.
as a young adult. And then it's published, you know, by an editor who kind of works on it a little bit like Emily Dickinson's poetry, where there's sort of line breaks and creative spacing that is sort of added to it. to bring out the meaning other people see in it, basically. All right. And I'm putting a link here. And I would love for you to just read the beginning of this book until we get to like the first.
First break, it's a couple pages. My mother and father are gone. The man did say they went to heaven and do live with God, but it is lonesome without them. The mama where I live says I am a new Sam. Is that right? One of the things people find charming about the book is that it's like a child trying to sound out adult words theoretically. So this is supposed to be her writing nuisance. Got it. The mama where I live says I am a nuisance. I think it is something grownups don't like to have around.
She sends me out to bring wood in. Some days there is cream to be shaked into butter. Some days I sweep the floor. The mama has likes to have her house nice and clean. Under the steps lives a toad. I call him Virgil. He and I, we are friends. Under the house lives some mice. They have such beautiful eyes. Back of the house are some nice wood rats. The most lovely of them all is Thomas Chatterton Jupiter Zeus. He has been waiting in my sun bonnet. Long waits while I make print.
The dog, brave Horatius, has longing in his eyes. He wants to go. In the pig pen, I hear Peter Paul Rubens squealing. We will all go explores. What do you think? Did a six-year-old write this? No. I don't think so either. And weirdly what clinches it for me personally is the use of the word shanty. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Well, it's also just like, don't we already know that a six year old didn't write it? Because she was like, said she like when it was marketed, do we know if.
Well, it was marketed as, yeah, as the diary of a six-year-old. Yeah. And people had doubts, you know, immediately, you know, because people were not. Yeah. any dumber then than they are now. Yeah, yes, right. But yeah, what are your impressions of this? And especially as a trained poet? My impressions is that a lady wanted to write like a six-year-old, you know, it just really reads that way.
I don't know. You can do something like that. And I'm not going to be mad. It's like silly to pretend to be six, I guess. But. It is really different than taking on a story that's not yours that could have like material harm come from it to other people. And this again, I know this happened a long time ago, but now you could put something like that out. And just admit what you were doing. And you're still... You could just be like, I'm writing as my six-year-old self. And it's like, that's cool.
Like, I'm more interested in that than reading a six year old's diary. Probably all of the books we've talked about today, like this also feels like a therapy journal, you know, like so many of the books you read, you're like, I think this should be a therapy journal, whether they're hoaxes or not.
Having talked about all of these with you today, in each of these, there's this idea of like the author using literary work to construct an other self that they believe to be more lovable than the one that they are. You know, and that like these are interesting poems for a young poet to be writing in the voice of their childhood self. Like they're pretty good as poems. Like I like them. I would like you said, I would read them if they were just being described.
as the thing that they seem to be, you know, and I do believe that there's likely like you know they perfectly well could be an actual diary that there's that this has some basis in right but it's like i there's not a doubt in my own mind that this was not dramatically improved on by an adult you know at the very least I'll say. Yeah, that's revealing, you know, the fact that we were more interested than in a girl prodigy than in a woman poet.
And we're more interested in sort of this idea of someone proving they deserve our attention through being spectacular than by expressing to us how difficult it is to be ordinary. Because as ordinary people, that's actually... Kind of the thing that we need to hear the most, but is also very scary to us. Yeah. Yeah. Being ordinary. The great American sin. Right. None of us are supposed to be ordinary. And yet statistically, I mean.
I feel like it is this just overblown version of what we all do. Like, you know, like Chelsea Webber Smith proper on American Hysteria is not.
exactly who I actually am. It's a side of you. It's one of the 12-sided die of you. I'm much bitchier. Yeah, I'm much bitchier than I am on American Hysteria. And you know, I might have my like... sweet little like ending scenarios where I like get on my you know my like little soapbox I try not to get on a tiny little box but I get on my little soapbox and I say all my little things and I say my conclusions and shit, but it's not like it didn't take like
much bitchier time to get to those like nice loving conclusions like you know, you're just constructing a self Well, it's like you're the vineyard and the show is the wine, you know, and when you drink the wine, you're like, wow, it must be great to be wine. And it's like artists are not wine. We like sort of crush our being into something that becomes wine. But like the day to day existence is not.
that drinkable. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that that is part of art. Like, I think there's this like misconception that The artist puts forth their truest self. And it's like that is couldn't be farther from the truth, you know, and it's that's OK, because like. art is about more than just stream of consciousness sometimes not always but like there is like a certain polishing and there's a certain you know manipulation that happens because you want to get
The product. I hate saying the word product, but you want the you know, you want the the end creation to reflect what you would like to be almost like I feel like and that. really problematic when it's like, I would like to be this. This fake person I've created in my hoax memoir. But there is some true thing to that where it's like you wouldn't be writing toward this like. false identity if there wasn't part of you that like wanted to have that false identity because somehow your own identity.
And that the best way to sell that identity to yourself is to sell it to everybody else. Maybe. Ooh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I think I want to be a more loving.
empathetic and non-judgmental person than I am so like I'm going to become that in what I put out because that's like what not just like oh I want to be this way for my image but like that's what I want to put out in the world like i want you know i may not be that how people feel about parenting i think it's because that we are we have podcast audiences instead of children yeah yeah very true very true
I don't know. It's like we all put out what we would like to be, and it's strange what some people would like to be, I guess. Yeah. We put out what we would like to be and we secretly reveal what we are the whole time. you don't have to remember everything like because if you're actually writing a memoir about your actual self and you're actually trying really really hard to access the truth and recognizing that the truth is like delicate and fragile you know and like needs to be
pursued very carefully I think there's a lot of therapeutic work and like like you get to learn who you are by writing about who you are and maybe writing through who you think you are who you would like to be or the lies that you would like to tell and then not telling them and then realizing
the things you remember to say about who you are and what you've been through. You know, I think that if you're writing in order to lie to yourself, then you will lie to your audience. And if you're writing in order to tell the truth to yourself, then you'll also tell the truth to your audience in more ways than you realize.
as you're doing it and it's scary but it feels really good yeah chelsea just i don't know thank you for being here and thank you for pursuing the truth and like doing the very stressful clammy work of trying to figure out what happened as opposed to just freewheeling it, you know, because thank you for doing that. Oh, it is clammy. Well, thank you, Sarah. Oh, thank you so much for having me.
thank you for being in the unified field with me and uh i guess i don't know this makes me want to tell Just a little Chelsea story because you visited me a couple weeks ago and we were driving back to my house and you saw what looked like an interestingly abandoned building. And then you were like, I'm going to get into that building. And then I woke up the next day and you were gone. And I was like, yep, they'll be back. And I didn't get into the building, but I got really close to it.
to Chelsea Weber-Smith, host of American Hysteria, for joining and talking about chickenpox and poetry and abandoned buildings and everything else with me. And thank you, as always, to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and producing.