Clueless In New York
Nancy Rommelmann has a great piece up on LAObserved on how ridiculous it was that nobody in publishing spotted the Margaret Seltzer hoax -- but how unsurprising that is, considering the provincialism of some New Yorkers (and Nancy and I have both been "New Yorkers" -- Nancy was a native, and I was a transplant.
For those who haven't read the news, Seltzer is the gang member who wasn't -- the former foster child who wrote a book about her life in the Bloods, but who really was a girl who grew up privileged and private-schooled in the Valley. From Nancy's site:
I figured out at least one of the reasons why those in New York who’d bought and published and lauded "Love and Consequences" were able to do so with a clear-ish conscience: the stories did not sound made-up to them. To a New Yorker, black foster mothers in South Central are, naturally, called Big Mom. Little girls who’ve been sexually abused show up with blood on their panties. And do 13-year-olds buy their own burial plots? In LA, they do. And if those pesky things called “facts” couldn’t be checked, it’s not their fault, but the fault of Jones’s family members and friends all being dead or in prison. Duh.
As I posted on Nancy's site:
I especially loved the bit about the burial plot. Being 13 and being in a gang are both about immediate-think. What 13-year-old thinks of tomorrow, let alone death, let alone sentimentalizes death?
The entire LAObserved piece by Nancy is here.
Oh, I was fully morbid by 13.
Paul Hrissikopoulos at March 6, 2008 12:37 PM
Morbid, okay. Planning for the future...don't think so!
Amy Alkon at March 6, 2008 12:53 PM
That's true. To this day I don't care what happens to my corpse.
Paul Hrissikopoulos at March 6, 2008 3:51 PM
Amy I like your judgment on this one... Worrying about one's body (Pinksyspeak: 'somatic preoccupation') even after death only happens to people who have the certainty and leisure to not be worrying about their body while it's alive ... i.e., someone from Sherman Oaks.
More than that. This is kind of like that thing with the James Frey 'memoir' that Oprah was so fascinated with a few years ago.
I'm not a sharp guy, but like to think I could have called Bullshit! in both cases. Maybe not, but someone could have. But the thing is, only people who don't know anything about real life or real feelings reads books like this South Central memoir.
Back in the seventies we used to make fun of emotionally understimulated housewives for taking Valium. (I never had any, but it's probably real good.) That's probably the sort of person who needs to read memoirs like this, and can't tell the real from the fake....
Turns out Frey is mentioned in the link, too. I don't care enough to study the details, but Rommelmann says Kakutani got taken in. This sets my heart free.
Crid at March 7, 2008 4:00 AM
A linked blog asks: "Why is everyone so all-fired eager for gang-banger drug-addict holocaust-refugee-raised-by-wolves oppressed-campesino truck-stop-cowboy bio-porn?"
Crid at March 7, 2008 4:04 AM
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