humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

How "true" are fake autobiographies, written by fake people,
describing fake events?
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My So-Called Life Story
By Anne Applebaum [washingtonpost.com]
Tuesday, March 11, 2008; Page A19
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<them, lent them -- a trio of autobiographies landed on my desk last
weekend: Valerie Plame's "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by
the White House," George Tenet's "At the Center of the Storm: My Years
at the CIA" and Peter Gay's "My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi
Berlin." Though Plame and Tenet were published in 2007 and Gay in
1998, I hadn't read any of them.
.
How "true" are real autobiographies, written by real people,
describing real events? Coincidentally, I was first taught to ask this
question by Peter Gay himself, now an emeritus professor of history,
during a seminar on autobiography that he taught 20-odd years ago. As
I recall (if I recall correctly!), we were debating Rousseau's
"Confessions" when Gay pointed out some element of the story that
could not possibly have been true. He then invited us to think about
why, in that case, Rousseau had changed it. For unconscious emotional
reasons? Or consciously, to shape his reputation?
.
Reading Gay's own idiosyncratic autobiography, it's evident that he
had such historical uses and abuses of autobiography in mind while he
was writing. During his account of growing up in and emigrating from
1930s Berlin, he frequently questions both his recollections and his
motives for recording them. He confesses to prejudices, most notably a
hatred for the Nazi regime, which might color his account of his pre-
Nazi early childhood. He admits to important gaps in his memory.

We've all gotten used to the idea that life stories can be "sold";
that lives that contain accidents, deviations and inexplicable moments
of uncertainty, as all lives do, can be *CRAFTed* , shaped and
presented to the public by marketing specialists -- and yet remain
"true." No wonder we're so easily taken in, nowadays, by fraudsters,
hucksters, fake drug dealers and, of course, people who claim to have
been raised by wolves.>>
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Art Neuendorffer