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Literary hoaxes, forgeries and frauds
When The Smoking Gun (http://www.thesmokinggun.com) began to investigate author James Frey, all it wanted was a mug shot. Frey's 2003 memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," which chronicled his painful recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, had become one of the best-selling titles of 2005 after Oprah Winfrey selected it for her book club. The Internet muckrakers decided to include Frey, whose book described a lengthy criminal record, in their popular "Arresting Images" feature (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/mugshots/index.html), which displays the booking photos of athletes, musicians, politicians, mobsters, Hollywood heavyweights and has-beens.
But the Smoking Gun soon discovered more than a mug shot. Reporters learned that Frey had fabricated or exaggerated much of his criminal past and also had attempted to expunge official records that would contradict those sections of his book. Earlier this month, the site published its final report, "A Million Little Lies: James Frey's Fiction Addiction" (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html), which provides related police reports, court documents and interviews with Frey himself.
"A Million Little Pieces" now joins several other best-selling memoirs whose authenticity has been called into question, including Augusten Burroughs' "Running with Scissors" and Dave Pelzer's "A Child Called It." The Frey exposé has sparked coast-to-coast debate about the level of truth required in "nonfiction," with both The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/weekinreview/15kenn.html) and The Los Angeles Times (http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-et-memoir13jan13,1,5637574,full.story?coll=la-headlines-lifestyle) weighing in. (Free registration may be required at both newspapers; for a shared username and password, visit http://www.bugmenot.com/).
But while this rash of recent controversies may seem like a modern epidemic, literary frauds have occurred practically since the invention of the printing press. The Museum of Hoaxes maintains a page about historical frauds (http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/history/lithoax), focusing on the 18th century's so-called "golden age of literary forgery." The University of Delaware Library also provides much historical background with its Frank W. Tober Collection on Literary Forgery (http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/forgery/). The Delaware exhibit details some of the best-known frauds of the 18th and 19th centuries, with a particular emphasis on William Henry Ireland's Shakespeare forgeries. Ireland's phony Shakespeare papers are considered to be the most audacious literary hoax in history, and their story is also documented at Court TV's Crime Library (http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/scams/shakespeare/). Of course, even Shakespeare himself has been accused of being a fraud—conspiracy theories abound as to the real identity of the Bard. The Wikipedia entry on Shakespearean Authorship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespearean_authorship) summarizes the various schools of thought on Shakespeare's "true" identity.
For more about modern literary scandals, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently published its list of the 10 best hoaxes (http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/hoaxes.html). The list includes such 20th-century frauds as the "Hitler diaries" and "Go Ask Alice," the anonymous "diary" of a troubled teen, whose authorship also was debunked on the urban legend Web site Snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/askalice.asp).
You can learn more about the history of literary hoaxes at the UB Libraries. Try a subject search in BISON—The UB Libraries Catalog (http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/bison/) for the phrase "Literary forgery and mystifications" to find titles like "Faking Literature" and "Practice to Deceive: The Amazing Stories of Literary Forgery's Most Notorious Practitioners." Just keep in mind that you can't always believe what you read.
—Jennifer L. Behrens, University Libraries