Reflection 7

Memoirs and nonfiction

Memoirs, autobiographies and fiction have fine lines  between them. The author that had so much drama over his book would not have been in the trouble he was in if he had published it as fiction. He wanted to changed the type of book to a nonfiction memoir to pick up the sales of his book.

I think his first mistake was changing the facts, lying, embellishing, whatever we want to call it. After that he was just being a people-pleaser; he changed facts and labels to make his book more appealing. Isn't that what we do with reports and essays though? If all high schoolers typed the way that words first occured to them, some grades may look pretty bleak. The difference is that he should have at least had a small print disclaimer of a statement that said something along the lines of "Hey, some of these details were changed to please you. I'm sorry you're welcome."

FInally, I think that most of the blowing-up came from Oprah, not the audience of the book. She seemed mostly concerned with how endorsing a book that turned out to not be totally factual made her look bad. Hasn't she had fictional books on her list before though? Authors of the future; please take this as a lesson in the importance of covering yourself.