Fiction as Fact. Exposure of "Memoirs" as Fake.

Should you believe ANYTHING you see in print (or in the MSM)?

James Frey has just been exposed as peddling a hoax ("A Million Little Pieces") on Oprah. Now we have a middle-class white guy who also writes gay porn passing himself off as a Navaho Indian and writing three "non-fiction" books about his life on the reservation and fathering children who died of AIDS and fetal alcohol syndrome.

Oh, he also wrote a book about gay soldiers in Viet Nam which fitted perfectly since he was neither gay, had never been a soldier and was certainly never in Viet Nam.

From Newsobserver.com :

Former Chapel Hill author Nasdijj won national acclaim writing memoirs about his brutal childhood as a Navajo Indian in the Southwest and as a father to two adopted sons who died of AIDS and fetal alcohol syndrome.

In truth, he was Timothy P. Barrus, a man of Scandinavian descent who grew up in a solidly middle-class neighborhood of Lansing, Mich., and had a career writing gay pornography, according to public records and several people who know Barrus.

The likelihood that Barrus had fabricated his past -- and parlayed the fiction into three successful nonfiction books -- was first raised Wednesday in a lengthy article in a Los Angeles newspaper that outlined similarities between Barrus and Nasdijj.

From the LA Weekly we get much greater detail. We also get a recipe for turning a ho-hum performance into one that attracts a crowd: create controversy, even if you have to send fake letters to the editor:

Bowers remembers collaborating with Barrus on an erotic photo exhibit called Sadomasochism: True Confessions. After the opening night of the show drew lukewarm interest, Barrus assumed the fake name John Hammond and wrote an open letter to The Weekly News attacking the exhibit.

“Sadomasochism is a disease,” the letter read “and gay men who are into that scene are wrong.” He then had Bowers write a response to their mythical antagonist Hammond, inviting him to “take a Valium, take a douche,” and published it in The Weekly News. “The next time Mr. Hammond wants to show his ignorance he should do some heavy research before he rejects his very own brothers.” The ensuing controversy rallied the gay community around the artists and propelled the exhibit to a successful run.

This is a good lesson to remember the next time exhibits covered with elephant dung, or photo exhibits of homo-erotica get to your home town. Are the outraged letters-to-the-editor really from the "artist" looking to get headlines?

The exposure of imposters is made possible thanks to the internet and search engines. How many of our cherished myths are frauds because they were perpetrated before we had the fact-checking ability we now have?