"'Love and Consequences' --has there ever been a more prophetic title for a novel in the history of publishing?"
I offered up that query to my wife this past week in response to the news that author Margaret B. Jones was forced to disclose that much of her supposed autobiographical novel by that name was pure fiction. In the book, subtitled "A Memoir of Hope and Survival," Jones (real name: Margaret Seltzer) details her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up as a gangbanger on the tough streets of South Los Angeles.
There was just one problem: The all-white Jones grew up attending a prestigious private school while living with her nurturing biological family in the comfort of affluent Sherman Oaks, Calif. You know, the same town where Marilyn Monroe and Liberace once lived, and home to the mall where Moon Unit Zappa perfected the art of Valley Girl speak. All in all, a far cry from running drugs for the Bloods, as Jones claimed in her book.
"Why are you surprised? It's not the first time this has happened and it seems like an easy way to get a book deal."
That's what my wife said in response to my query, but in all honesty I didn't catch a word of it. Often when she speaks I find myself gazing into her giant baby blues and my mind goes elsewhere. After all, she is a former supermodel. We met in 1998, just after she was the first girl to make the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue for three consecutive years.
I remember I was in the airport in the French West Indies and some snooty European was drooling all over her photos. I nudged him on the shoulder and gave him a wink.
"Buy your own copy, you American piker," he spat out with a look of disdain in his French eyes.
"I don't need to, my good man --I'm hittin' that. Doux, n'est-ce pas?"
Ah, if looks could kill I'd be buried out there among the palm trees --but I digress. The truth is my wife, whom Cindy Crawford calls for fashion tips, was right: There have been a rash of authors lately who eschew the boredom of truth for the glitz and glamour of the unabashed lie.
Take Misha Defonseca, author of "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years."
Her book, first published in 1997, made a huge splash due in large part to wild claims by the 60-year-old author. She claimed to have made her way across Europe as a child, stumbled into the Warsaw Ghetto, killed a German soldier in an act of self-defense and found protection among a pack of wolves. Her book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film.
The problem was that none of it was true. Defonseca, who spent the war years safely with her family in Belgium, didn't experience any of the outlandish things she claimed in her book --and she's not even Jewish. Talk about chutzpah!
Anyway, I was just about to bring all of this up to my wife, who was going over the prints from a photo shoot she'd just completed with Annie Leibovitz, when a horrific noise coming from our back yard diverted my attention. What happened next has been all over the news, but on the off-chance that you spent the whole of last week huddling in a cave, here it is in a nutshell.
We rushed outside to see the smoldering wreckage of a Gulfstream V strewn across the acreage behind our home. I was just about to say that no one could survive a crash like that when the emergency hatch was kicked open from within and a bloodied man stumbled out.
"Help us," he whispered before crumbling to the ground.
"My God, they're alive," I yelled. "We've got to save them."
Fortunately, I was a combat surgeon in a MASH unit during the Gulf War. The wife once played an ER nurse on an episode of "Beverly Hills 90210" --and supermodels, well, they just know things. Soon we had pulled all seven passengers (the flight crew and the members of the rock band U2) from the plane and were running a full triage unit on our back lawn.
"A million little pieces," I yelled over to my wife as she was giving Bono a blood transfusion, tapping into her own vein to do so.
"What?" she yelled back, while using her free arm to cauterize a gaping wound on The Edge's abdomen.
"I was just thinking of the irony of the title of James Frey's book, considering the current state of U2's luxury jet." Yes, Alanis Morissette, it was ironic. After all, no one had attempted a bigger scam than Frey. It was he who duped the great Oprah Winfrey into believing that his tale of a life spent as a drug-addicted alcoholic criminal was all on the up and up. After Winfrey made his memoir a selection of her book club, millions of Americans rushed out to Barnes & Noble to grab a copy. The novel grew roots atop the New York Times bestseller list and sold millions of copies.
The only problem, as Frey told Winfrey on an unforgettable episode of her show, was that much of the book was pure fiction. There are a few things you don't want to do in modern society, and making Oprah Winfrey look the fool is right near the top of the list.
"Let it go, will you?" my lovely bride screamed back as I used one of her crocheting needles to sew closed a wound on the chest of the bass player. "Even cake has been sullied."
As usual, she was bang on. When something as primitively pure as wedding cake has been dragged into the muck of fictitious boasting, the world has really gone to hell in a hand basket.
I was reminded of what she had said a week later, as U2 was recuperating nicely at the hospital and the youngest woman ever to have received a contract with Glamour magazine and I were standing in the Rose Garden at the White House.
As we were waiting for President George W. Bush to officially bestow upon us the Purple Heart --making us the first civilians ever so honored --my gaze was drawn to the beautiful cake created by the White House pastry chef just for the occasion. It was molded in the shape of the Gulfstream V and came complete with these words: The world would have lost its greatest rock band, if not for U2.
"Robert Irvine," I blurted out a little too loudly. "That's who you were talking about when you said that even cake had been sullied."
"Duh," she answered and gave me a disdainful look that I've often seen on her face when she gets together with her many friends from Mensa.
Irvine, of course, was the chef fired from the Food Network after it was discovered that he'd lied in his book "Mission: Cook!" about baking the wedding cake of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.
As we were leaving the White House with our Purple Hearts, we passed by disgraced aide Tim Goeglein begging for change at curbside. You may recall that he shamefully resigned his post after it was learned that he plagiarized portions of the freelance newspaper columns he'd written for over 20 years. I looked at him with pity in my eyes as the wife whispered in my ear that she'd invited Giselle Bundchen over to spend the night and that things might get "spicy."
"Hey, aren't you that columnist for the Reporter?" Goeglein asked me.
"Yes," I responded, annoyed that he'd taken my thoughts away from two supermodels sprawled across my big brass bed.
"You're lucky, man, and don't forget it."
"How's that?" I responded.
"You've got great fact-checkers over there. They'll keep you out of a world of trouble."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | March 18 2008 |