The Use and Abuse of Literature - Marjorie Garber [158]
9. Motoko Rich, “Publisher Cancels Holocaust Memoir,” The New York Times, December 28, 2008.
10. York House Press, “Publishers’ Statement Regarding New Herman Rosenblat Book,” January 2, 2009.
11. Jacques Derrida, Demeure: Fiction and Testimony (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 29.
12. Melissa Trujillo, “Writer Admits Holocaust Book Is Not True,” Associated Press, February 29, 2008.
13. Daniel Mendelsohn, “Stolen Suffering,” Week in Review, Op-Ed, The New York Times, March 9, 2008.
14. Mimi Read, “A Refugee from Gangland,” The New York Times, February 28, 2008.
15. Anne Bernays, letter to the editor, The New York Times, March 7, 2008. Others wrote to the same effect, including Corinne Demas, the author of a memoir of her own, as well as books of fiction for children and adults. Demas, who teaches fiction writing at Wellesley College, noted that “readers will dismiss a work of fiction when the character’s story doesn’t ring true, but call that same work a memoir, and they’re gullible,” then went on to suggest that “Given the current appetite for sensational memoirs, it’s not surprising that young writers eager to be heard will eschew the tradition of fiction—where everything depends upon the power of the prose—for one where they can easily capture an audience through their titillating content.” Corinne Demas, letter to the editor, The New York Times, March 7, 2008.
16. Perhaps the most dismaying response to the James Frey scandal was the feeling on the part of many readers that, true or false, his book had given them the feel-good, “redemptive” experience they’d hoped for when they bought his “novel—er, memoir.” Mendelsohn, “Stolen Suffering.”
17. Daniel Defoe, Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders (London: printed for and sold by W. Chetwood, at Cato’s-Head, in Russel-street, Covent-Garden, and T. Edling, at the Prince’s-Arms, over-against-Exeter-Change in the Strand, 1722).
18. Jill Lepore also cites the example of Robinson Crusoe in an article on history and fiction, “Just the Facts, Ma’am,” The New Yorker, March 24, 2008, 79–82.
19. Samuel Richardson, Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, eds. T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 7. Prefatory letter attributed to the Reverend William Webster. For Richardson as “editor,” see 3, 4, 6, 9, 412.
20. James W. Pennebaker, Writing to Heal: A Guided Journal for Recovering from Trauma and Emotional Upheaval (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Press, 2004), and Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions (New York: Guildford Press, 1997).
21. Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria, vol. 2, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1955), 8.
22. Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, September 21, 1897, in The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904, trans. and ed. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 264.
23. Paul de Man, “Autobiography as De-Facement,” in The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia Univresity Press, 1984), 69.
24. “Best-Seller List,” The New York Times Book Review, March 9, 2008.
25. All published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, a trade press.
26. Drake Bennett, “House of Cards.” Boston Globe, April 6, 2008, C2.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Matthew Gilbert, “Blurring in ‘Billionaires’ Is No Accident,” The Boston Globe, July 19, 2009, N1.
31. Janet Maslin, “Harvard Pals Grow Rich: Chronicling Facebook Without Face Time,” The New York Times, July 20, 2009, C4.
32. Motoko Rich, “New CUNY Center to Focus on the Art of the Biography,” The New York Times, February 23, 2008.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Plutarch, Life of Alexander, trans. John Dryden