solving the world's literary crime, one writer at a time

Because I'm way behind on fun reading, I had no idea until this evening that The New Republic ran a story last month about possible Sedaris fraud. On one level, I don't really blame them. Who better to be a watchdog for literary crimes than the former enabler of Stephen Glass? It's the literary equivalent of gaydar. Plus, I assume their factchecking department has improved in the interim.

However, the logic is definitely flawed. Not fatally, but close. David Sedaris has been pretty open about the exaggeration factor. The article explicitly mentions this. But trying to prove the precise extent of the exaggeration feels a bit too nitpicky. The grain of salt offered by this admission should be enough for most marginally intelligent people; do we really need an itemized list of what was enhanced and what wasn't? If Sedaris runs for president or American Idol, maybe this will be more relevant.

And this was all dredged up with the James Frey mess, but nobody's pushing David Sedaris as a beacon of what anybody should do with his life. His writing is a lot of things, but "life affirming" isn't quite one of them. He's a humorist. Dismissing that claim out of hand--as the secondhand Slate article does--is a mistake. No one wants to read ostensibly funny memoirs that detail everything exactly as it happened--mostly because no such book exists. Real life is rarely funny; and when it is, it's the kind of quiet, poignant funny that isn't really funny at all. (See: every memoir ever written by a female comedian detailing her uterus-related illness.) We pretty much expect our memoirists to punch it up. That's why these books aren't published under the banner of "self help," or "go ahead and sue me if you find inaccuracies."

And most of Sedaris's books aren't even published under "autobiography." Walk into any bookstore--the books are in Humor. According to the Library of Congress, David Sedaris is an American humorous essayist. Check and...check. Naked is the only one that lists "biography" among the LOC designations. Admittedly, that's the one under the most contention in the TNR article, but still...kinda weak. If the books were marketed as being inspirationally true, this would be much different. Call me when you can verify every claim Donald Trump has ever made in print.

Alex Heard squanders whatever points I may have given him for journalistic integrity when he details how he dug up long-gone acquaintences, a random nurse, and Lou Sedaris to prove that some moments and pieces of dialogue may have been fluffed. Very Fox News, Mr. Heard. Good job. The whole thing smacks of "vendetta," even though there doesn't seem to be any real animosity. Parts like this are especially telling:

Libby describes a friend who was funny and caring, and who had a soft spot for outcasts. She thinks the depiction of Sharon in David's "novels" (her term) is entertaining but a little off, because Sharon, far from being the full-time grouch of David's stories, was a capable mother. "The sarcasm is a little bit her," Libby said. "But she was nurturing, she was warm, she cooked dinner every night. I thought she was a marvelous woman."

She "thinks" the description is "a little off"? That's not a breaking news story. That's a personal issue between the writer and his writees. And discussing whether the dialogue sounds "too good" is probably less of an accuracy issue than a language one. Unless there's a verbatim record of every conversation ever had, memoir dialogue is going to be somewhat more approximate than, say, a transcript of Meet the Press.

But whatever its many flaws might be, the TNR article does have one of the best magazine illustrations I've seen in a long time. So, you know, there's that.