The revelation that a searing tell-all memoir about gang life in LA was made up by a suburban white chick has inspired Dan Drezner to sponsor a contest for best fake memoir title. And, of course, a good name to go with it:
I hereby declare the formula to determine your Fake Memoir Name to be......drumroll..... the first name of your gender-appropriate paternal grandparent + the last name of your first-grade teacher.In which case, my Fake Memoir name is.... Lou Hayes.
I have composed several candidates for the title:
1) Red Herring: Five years inside the CIA's secret war in Denmark2) Lost innocents: a memoir of dying in the World Trade Center Attacks
3) Kidnapped!: How I survived being abducted by Indians
The problem is, I never went to first grade, so my memoir name is Catherine . . .
Wouldn't it be more in keeping with the spirit of the contest to come up with an algorithm for generating fake memoir titles? Kind of like we have The [Gerund] of America for declinist pop-econ titles?
"The Secret Diaries of Joe Jackson Uncovered: The Real Story of the 1919 Black Sox"
I have a pretty great fake author name: Francis Valenti.
As for the book title, I'll have to put more thought into that....
Against all reasonable probability, my fake memoir name is Theodore Roosevelt.
Hmm, interesting. I even look like a James O'Connor.
I don't think Adolf Murray is going to sell many books.
My first grade teacher was a nun, and I have no idea what her real name was. My Grandfather was Percy.
So I guess that makes me Percy Clemencia.
I have you all beat. My memoir name would be Moose Powers.
I don't much look like a Clyde Sakanaka, I'm afraid.
What's so bad about a fake memoir, anyway? As long as the author doesn't make stuff up about other, real, people it's just fiction marketed as nonfiction. People read fiction all the time and they don't seem to mind that the stuff isn't true.
I guess many readers just get a stronger emotional attachment if they believe it's a true story* and get really upset when the author exposes how easily it is to manipulate his audience.
*Though nobody seemed to mind that "Fargo" was not, in fact, "Based on a True Story."
"Off The Net: My Life In The Arena Football League Superstar" by Robert Elander.
"Off The Net: My Life as An Arena Football League Superstar" by Robert Elander.
I can't quite conjure up my first-grade teacher's name just now, so I'll go with one of the teacher's aides instead. I think "Harold Abernathy" has a nice ring to it...although I doubt it would allow me to credibly claim a former membership in an LA street gang.
My name: Sam Chalker.
"Autobiography of an Illiterate"
"Blood and Moonshine: Wait a Minute, They Legalized Corn Ethanol?"
"100 Siberian Winters: My Life as a Block of Ice"
Mine would be Julian Hudson.
"Serving time when you're Three-foot-nine"
"The Emperor of Pool Checkers"
"Living in a hole in Dushanbe"
Would anybody buy a book by Walter Jimenez?
"From Murmansk to the Minors: A story of my failures fighting commies and hitting sliders" by Joe Kean
Odd thing is, that would almost be my paternal grandfather's real memoir.