Letters to the Editor
AmyAmyAmy
Published Letters: 2 Editor's Choice: 1
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Intent
[Read the article: Attention, all you memoir fabulists!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Intent has everything to do with whether or not something is a lie.
The oddities in the Bible (for example) are due to those stories being told orally, and, when they were written down, being written in the absence of history books or internet archives to make sure all the dates line up. We conclude that the writers had to guess, and did the best they could.
If Seltzer's book were titled, "The Autobiography of Margaret B. Jones, by Margaret Seltzer," I could see the comparison to Stein's faux autobio of Alice B. Toklas. But it's not.
The odd details of the diaries (Nin, Frank) point out, better than anything, how readers accept that "fact is stranger than fiction," and are willing to go along with details in non-fiction that would be rejected in fiction. In other words, you can pass off BAD fiction as non-fiction, by being a dirty liar. (And in today's market make more money doing it.)
Like some of the other readers, I find this satire less funny than cutesy, and since I do care about being lied to, it's the kind of cutesy you kind of what to slap off someone's face.
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A Novel Idea...
[Read the article: The strange case of midnight renegade oleander gentrification camouflage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's just a thought: why not ASK your neighbors if, since those plants were dropped on their property for free, they would mind parting with them, or even just some of them? It might be nice to put such a stretched-thin family in the position of being generous to YOU for a change. You could thin out the herd of oleanders by half or whole, and plant the darlings somewhere where their shade will do some good, for you or your neighbor.
This would be an especially delightful approach since your awful across the street neighbor obviously resents the money she spent on them. Wouldn't it be fun to let her realize that by planting them on someone else's property, she's given them away for free, and now your neighbors are at liberty to give them away to others? :-)