Gawker
Before her publisher Penguin Group realized she was a liar and recalled her memoir, Margaret Seltzer gave an interview on Penguin's website and, probably, in press kits distributed to book reviewers. The interview is chock-full of quotes from Seltzer about her life as an impoverished gang banger raised in a Los Angeles ghetto by a foster parent called "Big Mom." The statements of course look absurd and hilarious, since everyone now knows Seltzer was raised by her biological parents in a nice suburb, where she attended private school and was not a member of a gang at all. Go read Seltzer's lies, issued under her pen name "Margaret Jones," while they are still up on Penguin's website, or just take in highlights, after the jump.
One of Seltzer's cheaper tricks is a frequent use of urban black slang, which she probably inserted into her speech to bolster her claim of having grown up in South Central LA instead of, like, the San Fernando Valley:
Q: How did this book originate?
A: During my senior year of college one of my professors told me a friend of hers was working on a book and wanted to interview me. I declined. I wasn’t interested in the whole “South-Central-as-petting-zoo” thing. Then my home girl said the teacher might mess around and fail me for rejecting her friend, so I ended up calling the author and doing the interview. She was real nice and asked me if I had ever written anything. I ended up giving her one of a number of short stories I had written for my brothers’ kids and for the kids of my homies serving life sentences.
...
Q: What makes the difference between someone who is able to move up and on and out of the inner city and someone else who follows the trajectory into crime, juvenile detention, prison, and so on?
A: I wish I knew. I’ve got my homeboy who’s doing life who wrote me, “You and OG homie are the only ones who made it out.” Well, OG homie is now locked up. And I can’t even judge.
Requisite irony:
Q: What was it like for you going back and digging up all those painful memories of your childhood and teen years?
A: It was heart wrenching. And the amazing thing is that no matter how many rounds of edits I sat down with, it was heart wrenching each time. Sarah McGrath, my editor at Riverhead Books, said, “Every time I hit a certain page I cry.” I told her, “If you only knew! I hit that same page and cry every time too.”
The more blatant fabrications are also fun:
Q: What was the scene that affected both of you so much?
A: It was the scene in which my little sisters and I were walking home from the Korean grocery store and Nishia dropped a carton of milk. It burst open and the milk streamed into the gutter. She burst into tears, begging me not to be mad as she stooped down trying to scrape it all back into the broken carton. I told her I wasn’t mad. But I was. That was a half-gallon of milk wasted and two dollars gone. Even now, as an adult, just thinking about that—thinking about the choices you were given as a child that weren’t kid choices—makes me want to cry.
...
Q: You were 16 when you cooked your first batch of rock cocaine. What led you to do that?
A: Our water had been shut off because Big Mom couldn’t pay the bill. If your water is cut off social services is going to come and say it’s bad living conditions and take the kids out of there. Where I was was cool. I was with people who loved me. I didn’t want us to be split up so I was trying to be part of the solution. That meant bringing in money and getting the water turned back on. Once again that’s not a choice kids should have to make. I knew it was not right—cooking up rock. I knew I was contributing negatively to the community. But the water got put back on the same day. The reward was there. To go from wearing third generation hand-me-downs to wearing name brand everything—when you’re a kid that stuff matt
Then there are the odd things Seltzer just can't remember. Like the sexual abuse she said she suffered as a child, which in the Q&A she implied was something she "barely remembered." Or the question below, where her repeated shrugs get more than a little suspicious:
Q: Do you think it was a good thing you were removed from your parents’ home and put into the foster care system?
A: Who knows? Who can say? What would have happened if I hadn’t been put into the system? To answer that you have to enter the realm of speculation and I try not to get caught up in “would have,” “should have,” and “could have.” What I can say is that I’m a strong person and that I’m very proud of the person I am today. I don’t have a lot of room for regrets, especially over choices I didn’t have.
Seltzer was also tired of her 'hood being stereotyped:
Q: What’s the biggest misconception people have about South Central, about gangs, about the ghetto?
A: Where to start? You meet someone and they ask where you’re from. If you say South Central they immediately ask if you were in a gang. Of course not everyone was, but then you’re embarrassed when you have to say, “Yeah I was.” And then they ask if you ever killed anybody. What? Who would ask that of anybody? There’s this whole misconception that we’re all cold-hearted killers, drinking forties out of paper bags, driving around in low riders—Bloods looking for CRIPs; CRIPs looking for Bloods—trying to shoot each other all night long. At one point I was showing my agent around my old neighborhood. We were shooting a video for the book. She said it was so much nicer than she thought it was going to be and that people were so friendly. We went to a local park and this couple walked up to us. I could see the camera crew suddenly got nervous. In my head I’m thinking, what do you think is going to happen? But then the couple was nice and all I could do was smile.
Sometimes you wonder why anyone believed Seltzer, particularly while listening to her weaker, more simpleminded lies and tricks:
Q: Throughout the book, when presenting dialogue, you write in slang. You also replace the c’s in many words with k’s. Why?
A: You have to find a balance. You want to make the book understandable to the average reader in the suburbs but you also want it to be realistic. I’m not going to walk into a store and say, “Hi. How are you doing? Nice to meet you!” I felt if I did that in the book something would be lost. And I want people to understand how deep-seated the hatred really is between CRIPs and Bloods. CRIPs celebrate C-days rather than B-days (birthdays) and Bloods smoke bigarettes not cigarettes. The hate is so deep that, as a Blood, you automatically change the spelling in words with a c in them.
Then there are the downright weird lies, where it seems like Seltzer is making it up as she goes along and lets herself go off on a tangent. Like in her story about the cop who buys pit bulls from gangster dog breeders:
Q: My understanding is that you’re an “inactive” gang member—that you’ve been given permission by the gang to step down from activity but are still considered friendly, and thus protected. Is that the case?
A: Am I “inactive?” I don’t know. There’s really no such thing. I breed pit bulls and just took some down to Los Angeles for this guy. He said, “I saw your photo on My Space. You’re a Blood, right?” I told him I was a Blood once upon a time. He said he’d never heard of such a thing as an ex-gang member. I asked where he was from and he told me he was a police officer.
Comments
How is it that her ineptitude at switching back and forth between her "gangsta" speak and white-girl do-gooder language didn't tip anyone off (NY Times, LA Times, agent, publisher...I'm looking at all of you)? So awkward. Jesus people, one phone call would have busted her.
Why do you find this "scandal" so fascinating? There are serial liars spouting horse shit on every street corner, and more than a handful in the White House.
Before the snarkfest begins on this, I'd like to say a few words in praise of Sarah McGrath -- a nice person and a good editor.
This kind of incident is every editor's bad dream. It could have happened to any of us. People in publishing usually come from middle-class backgrounds and find it hard to challenge these kinds of statements from someone who sounds sincere.
My best preparation for publishing was nothing that went on in college, but my two summers working as an orderly in a mental health facility.
There is no distinction between good writers and pathological liars. Creative writing is therapeutically prescribed for psychotics.
Ugh. It's still "rock cocaine" when white people do it. I thought we'd all agreed to call it crack? Jayzus, does she have Sorkin's PR?
Something fishy about McGrath's account... Two names are listed in the author info: Peggy Seltzer and Margaret B. Jones. Which presumably means that both names are listed on the contract. So did McGrath work on the edit with Seltzer or Jones?
You can see it in her eyes. The dark and hollow, I'm living a lie with each and every 40oz I pour on the curb for my homies.
@smithhimself: Your easy euphemisms for "failing at the job" intrigue me. Are you speaking from the liar's experience, or the gullible editors?
Who says "homies" anymore? That's so old skool.
*sigh* I wrote a memoir. It was rejected. Now I see why...it was true.
she makes diablo cody seem erudite.
bigarettes?? I think William Safire just creamed his jeans.
Is it a coincidence that one of the top Google citations for bigarettes is from the school paper at Brown [note: actual B, not Bloods for Crown?]
Also, bigarettes only have 162 hits? Don't Bloods have blogs [again, actual B, not Mario Batali-style shoes. Wow, writing gang is hard!]
d'oh! breamed his jeans. why ban't I type straight?
OMG! It's Vanilla Ice all over again!
In case Penguin pulls the interview (I guess it's really mostly a matter of when) -- here's the full text of it, y'all!
[www.scribd.com]
The real struggling writers who live in South Central would like as much attention. Who'll publish their stories?
The "home girl" as two words thing really should have tipped people off sooner.
@smithhimself: Uh huh. Well, she may be a hell of a person, and very kind, but it seems to me Sarah McGrath blew this one. As has been mentioned above: it's ONE phone call. Were there family members that could vouch for Ms. Seltzer? A social worker? A fellow gang member?
Yeah, people get duped, but in the age of Frey (et al), it's not much an excuse...
Also, girl looks like an albino. She couldn't spring for some Coppertone?
Ok, ok, lying is wrong, plus it feels good to see someone who actually GOT published eat crow. Fine. But really? Her sister Cyndi Hoffman is a gigantic bitch.
Her profile in the Times is almost as bad. She's cooking black-eyed peas and corn bread when the reporter comes over, and got "a tattoo of a large, weeping pit bull across her back the day the state of Nevada set a close friend's execution date."
Does she really have that tattoo? That's impressive dedication to a lie.
Also, her pen name is Margaret Jones, not Jordan.
And the kid -- is the kid hers, or is she some kind of weird stunt kid stand-in? Plus -- surely the sister and family knew the book was in the works before now -- why wait to out her -- was there some kickback not received? I'm just sayin' -- with all the cocaine talk, maybe this was about yayo. (Is that too Miami Vice?)
@donmiguel: I'm just waiting for the follow-up stories. Hopefully the papers that fawned over her book in reviews can now be bothered to do more than a single-source story and explain how such crap made it through everyone's (lack of) filters.
Why didn't she just call her book "fiction"? If it's so compelling then in theory it would have done just fine in that category. Why even bother with such obvious lies? Also, I love that it was her sister who tipped off her editor (at least according to the NYT article: [www.nytimes.com]).
The Penguin site is down, btw.
There are people with much more dramatic and interesting stories to tell who aren't telling them. They aren't telling them for one of two reasons.
1. They are true.
2. They cannot write.
You can write a memoir with either of the above qualifications and it's pretty obvious that it happens all the time. It's doubly sad, though, when neither of the criteria are there. Go ask Alice.
I need to point out in the interest of accuracy that it TAKES WATER TO COOK ROCK.
Don't ask me how I know that.
LOLies!
Word is Maureen Dowd mistook her for a Crip in the press room
@vulturesquadron:
Gosh. What a pleasant way to start one's day -- to be called a liar or a fool. And I haven't even had my second cup of coffee.
I'm a working editor, VS. And I known the occasional strangeness that can go on between editor and writer.
Most of the time, it's business. But there are times, where you become emotionally invested in the person and the project. This is when you lose your objectivity.
@rubyruby: For the same reason James Frey didn't call his book fiction. It couldn't get accepted for publication it as fiction. It probably wasn't good enough.
People don't seem to get that fiction actually has to be superior in quality to the exact same material presented as fact (e.g., "memoir," "autobiography" or whatever). Tacky, middling-quality material can still come across as attractive and compelling to readers if it's presented as something that really happened. Why do you think books, movies and TV shows always display that "based on a true story" tag so prominently?
If she could have published this as fiction, I'm sure she would have. I'm guessing that (like Frey) she tried and failed, and that finally she (or somebody else) changed the "fiction" label to "memoir."
@bigleggedwoman: Yeah, but not a lot, and it's not like "peeps" won't give you a cup of water now and then, especially if you promise them "first dibs" on the next batch of "rock-cocaine." (Or "rock-bobaine," as I think "da homiez" call it in "da hood.")
My hunch is that Margeret Seltzer is a smart, deeply insecure white girl from a well-to-do family who has never felt like she belonged enough and who has always felt trapped in that safe rich hollowness. She has had substance abuse problems and brushes with law enforcement which she draws on for her fabrications and which have made her feel more legit in identifying as an outsider. Hanging out with black kids from South Central, she convinces herself that she is passing and that she has found her "true" community.
In my opinion, this is more about self-delusion than lying, which is why I'm betting her sister got so frustrated and called her out.
is this the same "inactive Blood" who was written up in the times last week?
You want funny, go listen to her interview on yesterday's edition of On Point with Tom Ashbrook (WBUR). In light of these revelations it's hysterical. BTW: What happened to fiction? Are our imaginations so impoverished that we can't find be compelled by a piece unless it's "true" ? Seriously, Americanians, Ulysses wasn't "true." Hamlet didn't actually happen.
There are a lot of compelling books by relatively privileged white people about growing up poor and black in the inner city. Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is one, There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz is another. In fiction we have The Wire and The Corner, just for instance. These books and shows honor their subjects and help provide a voice for them, I would argue, without resorting to lies. ANL and AK, in fact, grasped that ruthless truth telling was the only path to creating successful and compelling narratives that honored their subjects.
@soybomb: never mind, i scrolled down. this is ridiculous!
I think that this scandal gets close to the point but not quite. The real scandal is not that memoirs are enhanced (as in James Frey) or complete fabrications (as in this sad tale); it's that in modern publishing the author's biography and persona have become crucial to a book's success. The JT Leroy debacle is a good example of this. The author wrote fiction but invented a nom de plume and backstory that was salacious and sympathetic. The resulting success was NOT because of the quality of the writing but rather because of the writer's story.
Part of the issue is the age of most editors and critics. They're in their 40s and 50s, so they didn't grow up listening to rap and watching modern gangster movies. Anything that seems "gritty" and "street-wise" gets a free pass, no questions asked, because they want to remain relevant. This came into sharp focus for me after reading glowing reviews of the movie "8 Mile" and then actually seeing that amateurish, silly piece of shit.
@smithhimself: I'm not sure how you can defend McGrath--an editor, even a brilliant one, who has lost objectivity is a failed editor. And after Frey, there is no excuse for this situation. None. It's demoralizing for anyone in the industry, as if we need more demoralizing.
Sorry, Friday's edition of On Point. Seriously, folks, if you think the faux gangsta speak is funny in print, wait until you hear her actually speak...yo.
@smithhimself: OK, yes I slammed you first thing in the AM. But you said: "People in publishing usually come from middle-class backgrounds and find it hard to challenge these kinds of statements from someone who sounds sincere."
It bothers me that either you don't understand that confronting liars is part of the job, or you don't think doing the job well is important. Being a nice person is utterly, completely irrelevant. You are either a professional, or you go home crying.
It's when we hit the details like the black-eyed peas and cornbread that the story truly rockets into "I Love Lucy" territory.
Seltzer's genius for the broadly comedic is such that you wonder why she didn't allow herself to really go with it and explore an even wider range of improvisational possibility...
Why, for example, wasn't Margaret involved in a shoot-out with the LAPD? Why didn't Big Mom ever hold Margaret to her ample bosom and croon "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"? Where is the crabby old black gentleman whose terse, brutal wisdom ushered Margaret to redemption?
@Hamud: Yeah! And she should have written of the magically instructive time that she spent a few days chained to a radiator by Samuel L. Jackson!
@MisterHippity: Hmm. I had a memoir rejected because it had "insufficient incidental dialogue". Apparently I was expected to have made up some.