...you wouldn't say, "This is based on real events, but it is a work of fiction. The facts and timeline are at the service of the narrative."

Would moot all the kerfuffle, eh?

In fact, that's not a bad rule of thumb for politics, philosophy, journalism, and literature among others:

(please ignore the Oxford comma. Can't be helped.)

"Moot the Kerfuffle."

My life is almost entirely fictional. So is yours. Your memories are unrelieable, other people's recollections are self-serving (so are yours, so are mine.) Do we really need to be reminded of this so frequently?

Unless you have the laughably sophomoric idea that biographies are especially veracious bits of lit, then this really ain't news, is it?

Several years ago, a woman who had grown up in a town close to the one I grew up in published a memoir. She called it a "novel" and it's been a favorite of book clubs ever since. The structure and format of this book was a memoir, and the town's name was changed, along with some other names in the book.

Everyone who knew this woman and her family says the book should have been a memoir. The author pulled absolutely no punches and told things as they were.

However, she'll never get called onto the carpet for publishing some absolutely true stories that aren't, because the book is a "novel" and "fiction". And, as a nice addition, got revenge on some folks without being strictly liable. Sort of a Spoon River Anthology or The Last Picture Show vegence.

Many of us have experience with unreliable memories: I've recently told a story as true which was actually a "wouldn't it be funny if..." thing my friend and I were riffing on. That was pure accident (and embarrassing for me.) Memory IS unreliable, even recent memories, let alone ones from years ago.

However, we're talking "I told a story about my friend's dog that wasn't true." I didn't tell someone I was a half-Native-American gangsta. There is a difference between events remembered incorrectly and events that are flat out LIES. And you know them when you write them.

There are certain kinds of "creative nonfiction," such as the humorous essay, a la Erma Bombeck, which is obviously not true and not intended to be taken for true. And I have no problem with writing a memoir as fiction. I just don't think you should write fiction as a memoir.

Checking the authorship of books of the old or new testaments is an almost impossible task - but it has been undertaken and is ongoing - and its results are upsetting to people who believe that all the books had the same author under different names and writers. There are too many factors: language, time, skills, styles, purposes, literary forms, etc., etc.

Checking the authorship of modern memoirs and the authenticity of events "documented" is difficult too, but not so difficult as it might seem since we have tools now that weren't available hundreds of years ago. In addition to availability of historical facts, every previous writer has a personal "stamp" - and such personal "stamps" of familiar or well known writers are known.It is just a matter of editors taking the time and having a cynical mind. But who takes the time.

The nonsense spouted by journalists and news commentators is almost criminal - and no one seems to bother.

How do I know? Because some of my writings have been ripped off by people with bigger names. Others used them with my okay. Not that any of them were significant matters, but irritating nevertheless. The bigger the name the more they can get away with! The word is: careful!

Utterly delightful satire. Thanks for the laughs.

@pacrat

According to Igor Stravinsky: "Lesser artists borrow, greater artists steal." Considering that some of his major mature works were based on the themes of others (Tchaikovsky and a faux-Pergolesi most notably) it is pretty clear in which category he wished to be placed. But when asked if he thought that Leonard Bernstein stole ideas, he is supposed to have called Lennie a kleptomaniac.

Then again, there is evidence that many of his (Stravinsky's) witty not to say catty remarks (not to mention many articles in the NYRB and other places) were really authored by Robert Craft. Go figure.

Baroque composers, even the greatest, regularly stole from themselves...half the Bach B-minor Mass is recycled (albeit made sharper) from earlier cantatas.. and one reason that Handel was able to have composed "Messiah" in few weeks, was that he filched stuff from some of his earlier Italian operas. ..some of them very secular indeed... and just reset the words.

Consider it a tribute.

...but still, I've never seen a memoir stand up unscathed to fact checking by a source independent of the writer or the publisher. Especially if the person writing the work has any sort of public image or bio to protect/burnish.

I think it's time to admit that we're all figments of our imaginations. 'Twould cut down on the righteous indignation.

I don't think I believe in "Non-Fiction." I'm not sure its even possible.

Would we be better off if we just assumed that anything we read was fictive? I suspect we would. Especially on the Intertubes.

Let me repeat: brilliant.

Good point, and great article, pointing to the absurdity of the amount of scandal involving a much maligned genre.

Other posters have already thoughtfully pointed out the inherent flaw of memory and perception, which is why memoir and narrative nonfiction can be such a slippery slope/genre. Memoir, like fiction, out to have one thing in common, and that is good story-telling. But, unfortunately, reality television has insidiously trickled into the cracks of literature, and these days tell-all tales have become a huge fad, regardless of the writing quality. The shock factor weighs in heavily.

Fiction doesn't sell nearly as well as memoir, and hasn't in about 10 years (probably longer). Remember David Frey's 'A Million Little Pieces'? Entertaining book which he initially presented as fiction, but which was pushed as memoir to up the ante and sell better. It did.

And you know what? I would've found it just as entertaining were it sold as fiction. To me, as a writer and an avid reader, that's the bottom line.

I don't really give a rat's ass if a book is fiction or memoir.

I'm not condoning lying either, but I find the amount of scandal pretty funny. What if all this scandal were to be transferred onto visual mediums? Da Vinci's Mona Lisa was a figment of his imagination. What then? Do we dismiss that as art? What makes us get up on our collective high horses and claim to be the moral police? Why is it so important that memoir is FACT? When you go into the book store, non-fiction and fiction are separated, but memoir is a question mark because it's a fuzzy line. Not many book stores have a memoir section. Oh, there are autobiographical sections, but they're loaded with political and celebrity tell-alls these days. These days, you'll find a memoir in self-help or travel or some other section.

Write your memoirs and you'll still have an editor coming back to tell you to trim this, add that, and give you a pretty enough package to make sure the thing sells well. Even if you're 100% honest in memoir (whatever that means), the literary world is a business.

But the bottom line for me still remains: Fiction or memoir doesn't matter as much as whether the story is any damn good.