Why don't I care when memoirs are faked?

It seems that the last few years have seen several high-profile cases of faked memoirs. And each time I find myself interested in the details, but also puzzled by all of the hoopla. Now, I get my undies in a bunch every time I hear about plagiarism, but that seems different to me. Of course taking someone else's written work and pawning it off as your own is wrong. Insert "television" for "written work" and you can see how it directly resembles theft in the cops-and-robbers sense.

But making up a memoir? No one is out any money because they've had their own endeavors stolen by another. If not being the writer of the life portrayed were wrong because the person who actually lived it isn't benefiting, then biographers are consistently and permanently in the wrong. But many times the fake memoirist isn't even stealing someone else's life, they're merely playing pretend and neglecting to put the word "fiction" above the ISBN on the back cover.

Printing a false "truth" is hardly new. In fact it seems to have been a preferred literary model in the 18th century. Dangerous Liaisons, Moll Flanders, the Castle of Otranto: these are all faked works that falsely purported to be real, and while they fooled some, they were not shredded for it. In fact, many of my favorite works of fiction are memoirs.

So why are we so angered by this long-standing genre? Are we so wedded to a world of anecdote that we can't understand the problem of drug addiction without a Million Little Pieces to make it real? Is the only thing keeping us from being Holocaust deniers the ability to peek into the diary of a young girl? That would be far more worrisome than a fictional life story.

Or is there just too much shame in being labeled a fool? Are we collectively terrified of being Blair Witched? We place such an emphasis on the individual in America that maybe being tricked by a memoir is just an unforgivable sign of weakness in ourselves.

Personally, I kind of like being tricked this way. The faked memoir shows a slyness that is appealing -- it doesn't hurt me to believe in a life not lived. I certainly don't rule my own life by example of a memoir any more than by a novel. Both can illuminate how I see the world and how others experience it. Isn't that the point of fiction as much as biography? If there must be mendacity in the world I would rather it be between the pages of a memoir than in the content of a scientific research paper, or in the mail that comes to my grandmother.

So, perhaps I should content myself with Thackeray's Barry Lyndon, a lie on so many levels. A fake editor brings us the fake memoir of a man who never lived, but who nonetheless feels the need to lie about the true events of his life in order to protect his own, completely fictional, ego. Thank goodness for his Million Little Duels . . . I can't imagine a better joke in reality.