In “Love and Consequences,†a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.
Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members. Nor did she graduate from the University of Oregon, as she had claimed.
Well, gee. I wonder what made this gritty and realistic tale acclaim-worthy. Your assignment: find out what the reviewers said, and if you have the chance, pick up a copy before it’s removed from the shelves to let us know to what version of ‘realism’ this book pandered.
Fake/accurate.
Just a reminder, Dan, when the meta-truth comes out that “Jeff Goldstein” is actually a MÄÂori tribeswoman named Erihapeti with a good wi-fi connection, subscriptions to Fight! and Gourmet magazines, and a semester of lit crit under her belt you will be the one tasting crow.
[…] critically acclaimed new memoir about growing up among gangs in LA is a complete fabrication. Go […]
It can only be respected as fact but accurate if it were written by an actual member of the oppressed class. I expect full and complete condemnation.
And, she will be accused of racism.
fackurate (fak-you-rut), adj: containing fictional elements that leftists swallow hook, line, and sinker because thay want so badly for them to be true. ex; Johnny got a good grade from his NEA-member teacher on his composition about his dad losing his job due to NAFTA because it was so fackurate.
See also: urban legend.
Margaret B. Jones is down with the brown.
It was “real” enough for the New York times, and fit their narrative perfectlty.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/garden/first-chapter-love-and-consequences.html
Read it — it’s hilarious, particularly knowing its true provenance.
Young girl “adopted” by legendary gangster/daddy figure “Kraziak”, who passes on words of advice like “Be true to the game, live by her rules, and she will always bless you.” He buys all the kids ice cream with “crisp” $100 bills and acts as a wise conduit for the “true” history of the neighborhood. “From the stories Kraziak told, it seemed as though he’d been around almost as long as the hood itself. He knew everything about L.A.’s history, not only the history of our gang’s conception, but that of all the gangs. He told us about the Purple Hearts, and the Slausons, the gangs that preceded the Bloods and Crips, how they had formed in the forties and fifties to protect the community against the rampant racial violence.” A saint, really, and you know what happens to saints on those mean streets.
In a particlarly overdone passage, rival gang members gun down Kraziak, and young girl vows revenge: “As I turned the corner and saw my house with Big Mom in the doorway, I vowed to be like those Bloods, to get even. We were on our own in the City of Angels, and we were smoking [epithet], sending them to heaven every day just to keep the name.”
The aticle is scattered with “authentic” strret stuff, “kar” for car. “shyt” for shit, so who can blame the Times? especially when it fits the Narrative so well.
This synopsis doesn’t do it justice, BTW — you really have to read the whole thing.
Everybody sing with me, to the tune of “Mona Lisa”; a plea to our esteemed host:
Semiotics, Semiotics, how we need you!
To explain and deconstruct this vapid tome.
Falsely claiming street cred gaming with the gangstas,
while in truth the gin and tonics are ice cold.
docob: Knowing the truth, that Times article is worthy of the best parody from the golden age of TV comedy.
The same chapter was also printed in the USA Today.
Reviews yield added victim points: “A victim of sexual abuse in kindergarten, Margaret B. Jones (a.k.a. Bree)…” and sum it up in case we didn’t notice: “But what shines through is a powerful story of resilience and unconditional love, in a country that can too easily forget the people it fails. A-“
 you really have to read the whole thing.
God, that was awful. A cheap reminder of why I never buy best sellers. It is hard to believe anyone truly thought that was real.
I beg to differ. But I guess Dan Rather was one of the oppressed classes, so maybe you’re right.
Substantive post.
I’m glad you managed to squeeze it in between the ‘Good news from Iraq’
posts…………………………
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/03/AR2008030300311_pf.html
I just threw up in my mouth a little.
Fixed that for you to reflect the tightest butt cheeks in media.
Only one more, then I’m done, but this was hard to resist … from the NYT review of the book:
“She tells us about getting a .38 for her 13th birthday and learning how to cook up a batch of crack to pay her family’s overdue water bill.”
Oh, docob, I’ll have to get a new keyboard. Stop, I beg you!
Cleo seems to be all about the entitlements, these days.
Major John’s first law of commenting: Feed not the Thread Hijacking Talking Telephone Pole.
This is your first warning…
Don’t worry.
They aren’t going to discuss THAT subject. Never underestimate the power of denial.
Do NOT think of an orange kangaroo!
WE ARE LOSING IN IRAQ YOU WARMONGERING RACISTS !!!!
Indeed. Never underestimate the power of a desperate, soul-rending need for validation at any price.
“WE ARE LOSING IN IRAQ”
If JD can epiphanize, I guess I could be wrong about y’all.
Who is winning in Iraq, cleo, and how did you arrive at that conclusion?
“The aticle is scattered with “authentic†street stuff, ‘kar’ for car. ‘shyt’ for shit…”
So, the “hood” is now using Olde English spellings, like in “The Canterbury Tales”? These kids, you just can’t keep up with them and their lingo.
This is your second warning. DON’T MAKE ME CALL THE MAJOR!!!
My comment at 24 is troll repellent, BJ. Not one has ever tried to answer that question.
Summarizing semanticleo: “this story reflects badly on My Side. THEREFORE YOU MUST DISCUSS SOMETHING ELSE!”
Regards,
Ric
BMoe: Acknowledged. You shall be indemnified from the wrath of Major John when he returns.
Also Ric because he’s just so much smarter than the rest of us and acares me.
These people have the impression of Iraq as a freakin WWII or Vietnam movie. Like as soon as you leave the base people start screaming and shooting at you while Arab music is playing. You can walk around the city of Baghdad if you want, we had a damn 10 K race thru it on Thanksgiving when I was there for God sakes. The insurgents can not even attack the bases we have over there, and anytime they attack a convoy its usually just an IED then at most a couple minutes of small arms fire. If they stay in one place long enough they get the shit blown outa them by air support or when the QRF comes. They do not possess the combat power to conduct an attack on any sort of large scale. I mean have you ever heard of an offensive launched in Iraq by the enemy?????? No you have not since they can not mount one. People that say we are “losing” are full of shit. You can tell that by the fact they usually return to the argument of “well it is all for nothing anyway and not worth it” when it is all said and done.
I hope nobody challenges me today on PW. Brett Favre announced he’s retiring and that has me feeling cold thuggish.
You shall be indemnified from the wrath of Major John when he returns.
Thank God for that! He is a trained killer, you know.
/poke Major John.
If cleo really wants to talk about his/her link, and no one here wants to write about it, there are (shock, I know) other blogs that are. Go find one. Chat it up. Personally, I think it’s a really, really bad thing, just as I think injustices here in the good old US are really, really bad things, without having those really, really bad things cause me to conclude that The End Is Near, or some such.
So, not so much Must Not Be Spoken Of, as much as OT for this thread.
I know, sometimes we’re OCD about not constantly changing the subject. There’s always getting your own blog.
If cleo really wants to talk about his/her link, and no one here wants to write about it, there are (shock, I know) other blogs that are.
As I have pointed out to cleo before, the Pub is always open. I would love to see cleo go over there and lay out an actual assertion, then defend it like a reasonable adult. None of them seem to be up to it.
It’s funny that comment’s such as Cleo’s never occur on other non-pertinent threads. Only those that challenge the narrative.
And, by “funny” I mean predictable.
What’s all the fuss about? Clearly, the fault here lies with the editor, who removed Ms. Seltzer’s final lines:
“Then, I woke up, and realized, glancing around my bedroom at the iPod dock and the slowly advancing Roomba busy chewing up the crumbs from yesterday’s toast points and pate, that it was all just a dream…”
It’s deliberate, Carin.
Teh Narrative™ won’t stand examination, being largely composed of lies, exaggerations, and crap taken out of context. The objective is therefore to prevent examination of it by diverting discussion into unproductive channels. A discussion of semanticleo serves that purpose, and tickles her vanity to boot.
Too bad we fall for it as often as we do.
Regards,
Ric
The objective is therefore to prevent examination of it by diverting discussion into unproductive channels. A discussion of semanticleo serves that purpose, and tickles her vanity to boot.
That makes sense. But, I see it as more of a mental tick. Her brain short-circuits when challenged. The topic shift, like a tick, is totally involuntary.
I thought fiction was supposed to be made up. So what’s wrong with fictional fiction?
Or was this supposed to be non-fiction? If so, don’t worry. Michael Bellisles fraud is still available in my public library. Some of you still don’t understand. There is what used to be called fact – things that actually happened. The higher truth can ignore those facts.
There’s a killer Goodwill store in Sherman Oaks.
He is a trained killer, you know.
Which, according to some circles, makes him highly qualified to serve as POTUS.
And I’m cool with that.
Just because this person turned out to be a liar doesn’t mean all such stories are lies. I’d put Random Family, the product of ten years of research, up there with the best works of literary journalism. The thing is, it’s journalism, not memoir, so it had to be vetted by teams of lawyers. Amazing what a little word can mean in the publishing business. (They do try to vet memoirs sometimes, but in my experience, not that often, if only because people always have conflicting memories.)
Either way you still haven’t shared your Baton Rouge story.
You mean the one I promised to here? You’re right, I haven’t. But I can’t do that in public. The best I can do is point you this direction — or better yet, this one — and say if you want to hear the rest of it, send me an email.
oh. Ok. I will do my homework first.
Scott, I don’t mean to state that ALL such stories are lies. I just mean to say that people’s preconceptions prevent them from truly enjoying Melville.
Not saying you are Dan. In fact, the opposite. It’s just that liars like this one tend to discredit the rest, so when I see a liar, I like to point out some of the people whose truth-to-power is, you know, truthful.
(And happy, no need to do homework, I just don’t have your email address on this computer, so I can’t send you the MOST AWESOME REAL-TIME COMMENT THREAD EVER. It’s that good. Just send me an email.) (You’re welcome to as well, Dan, as are other here I trust.)
Cool. I’m emailing.