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You know what they say about there being no such thing like being little bit pregnant? Well, it turns out that there’s also getting to be no such thing as a memoir, for that matter an autobiography, with a little bit of fiction sprinkled on it. Certainly not in the United States, especially with watchdog blogs working round the clock sniffing around for sleights of facts, or enhancing facts with large dollops of the imagination.

American media recently went into overdrive when the aptly named website—thesmokinggun.com—exposed James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces—his “memoir” that shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list (and stayed a while) after talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey endorsed Frey’s book about his down and out days struggling with drug addiction and passing through the purgatory of jail and rehabilitation before “redemption”—as adulterated truth.

It was more like a million little lies: His time in jail could be measured in hours not months. The rest of the world was blowing up. Casualty figures in the killing fields of Iraq were mounting. An increasingly defiant Iran was flexing some muscle and intent on getting its own nuclear energy. President George Bush’s annual State of the Union address was round the corner. Yet as far as the media from Larry King Live to Anderson Cooper’s 360 to the newspapers and magazines were concerned, the stoning (metaphorical of course) of Frey was the Big Story. Rather, like a running soap opera with a progressively—and visibly—wilting Frey, especially after the coup de grace from Winfrey, his guardian angel. Even his literary agent dumped him.

I could go on about the comeuppance of the millionaire author whose subsequent book, My Friend Leonard, also went skywards on bestseller lists. But that is not where this column is supposed to be headed. What this incident and several others in the recent past reveal is the insatiable nouveau-lust for the “truth” that has become pandemic here.

To return to the unfortunate Mr Frey for a moment: He had wanted A Million Little Pieces to be categorised as a novel but his publishers wanted to slot it as a memoir. Not only is truth stranger than fiction, it also sells better, these days. The line between fiction and non-fiction has blurred further.

Just last week Martha Sherrill’s book, The Ruins of California, was published as a novel by Penguin Press. Originally to be brought out by Random House, Sherrill’s book was supposed to be a memoir about her father, Peter Sherrill, a colourful personality and well known polling expert. During the course of the research she uncovered some “truth” about him that she did not want to disclose, and decided to turn her memoir into a novel.

Consequently, Random House dropped the book, and the author is still paying back the advance the publishers gave her for the memoir.

Truth is getting increasingly sexy in this country. Perhaps it has to do with the prevailing obsession with Reality shows on television. Even the more popular TV series are being elbowed out of small screen existence because they can’t match the ratings of reality shows like the American Idol or Blind Date. Polls have shown that even though viewers realise that some of what they see on Reality TV has been fabricated, they still enjoy the semblance of truth—tweaking truth still allows them the satisfaction of being Peeping Toms and Janes, with “real” people as the objects of their curiosity. Could it be the boredom with lives too humdrum and suburban?

Fiction doesn’t give the frissons or the vicarious thrills that truth or lies dressed up as truth do. Some writers too appear to be bored with fiction or their own lives, and literally invent a life rather than resort to fiction. Writer Norah Vincent gave herself a manly hair cut, applied some ersatz stubble, sent her voice down under and lived as a man for eighteen months to write her book Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey Into Manhood and Back Again. Published last week Vincent’s book has created quite a stir because men emerge the sorrier sex after her gender-crossing experiment. While Vincent took on a male identity, others have taken on another race to get under the skin of another reality. Apparently the author of The Blood Runs like a River Through My Dreams who claimed to be the son of a Navajo Indian mother and a white father is actually all white, and stole somebody’s else’s life. Well, in this case at least one man’s truth is another man’s lie.

Email: jain_madhu@hotmail.com