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Then there’s the weirdness of JT LeRoy who has written a bunch of books, articles, and screenplays as a once-homeless, transgender, sex-working, oft-abused drug addict. But LeRoy is a middle-aged straight woman named Laura Albert who was eventually outed (and now sued) after a long investigation. Michael Gambino published The Honored Society in 2001, pretending to be a full-on Mafiosa who spent significant time in jail for murder, pimping, money laundering and all the rest. None of it was true. In 1997, Misha Defonseca wrote a massive European bestseller about being a Holocaust survivor, killing a German soldier, and living with a pack of wolves (!). It was B.S. In 1995, Binjamin Wilkomirski wrote a similar Holocaust survival story that was hugely popular and won plenty of literary awards. Also total B.S.

There are tons of other examples of memoir-deception, both recent and historical, many of them prominent hoaxes. The thread that runs through these stories is the presumption of authenticity in describing a life of trauma and pain. These fake memoirs are all characterized by their “gritty realism” and their witness to “horrifying reality.” A huge proportion of fake memoirs are written by people pretending to be indigenous or Holocaust survivors.