Fraudulent Memoirs and Psychological Essentialism

The big news out of the publishing industry is Herman Rosenblat’s Holocaust love story/memoir has been snuffed by his publish prior to release after The New Republic printed an article speculating that it was largely fictitious.  Rosenblat admitted the deception and, as expected, public outcry was forceful and the publisher’s decision to kill the book was swift.  As Rosenblat had originally publicised his story with an appearence on Oprah, the episode immediately brings to mind James Frey, whose fraudulent 2003 memoir about overcoming drug addiction made him the object of public scorn and a very stern talking to by Ms. Winfrey.

On the one hand, it is completely understandable that we would react this way when a memoir is revealed to have been invented.  Nobody likes feeling lied to, especially by someone whose story previously brought hope and inspiration. On the other hand, though, most great literature is fictitious.  In so many other cases, we are greatly moved by stories that are not even based in truth.  A great memoir that turns out to be invented should become just a great novel.  Clearly, though, this doesn’t happen, and I think that can tell us something interesting about ourselves.

It would be one thing if someone felt betrayed after having taken A Million Little Pieces at face value and later learning that the story that gave so much hope was in fact filled with lies.  But shouldn’t the rest of us be able to return to A Million Little Pieces after the initial emotions wear off and read it as a inspiring novel?  Alas, I suspect that Frey’s work will be forever tainted.  Similarly, Rosenblat’s memoir will never see print, even though I suspect that the same story would have been very successful had it originally been sold as fiction.

To understand this seemingly odd behavior, I think it helps to borrow the insights of Yale psychologist Paul Bloom.  He is currently writing a book about the concept of psychological essentialism, which he previews in this Bloggingheads clip.  The main idea is that the superficial features of something are less important to us in terms of bringing us pleasure than is our intuitive sense of what the thing really “is.”  Of course, that question has been debated by philosophers since the time of Plato, but Bloom would argue that, however hard it may be to put the essential nature of a thing in philosophical terms, our brains are built to identify it automatically and below the level of consciousness.

Previously, Bloom has written about how we understand art, with the thesis that we posess the intuitive ability to recognize an artists’ intent in his work, which shapes our perception of a piece.  These ideas are intricately related.  Consider how it makes perfect sense to pay millions of dollars for an original painting by, say, Monet, when even a perfect reproduction will go for only $20 at the local poster sale.  The value of a piece of art transcends the brushstrokes and lighting in the case of a painting or the plot twists and hero’s agon in a book.

A Million Little Pieces or Angel at the Fence will never become just great novels, because we will always see them for what they were intended to be, never for what they appear to be.  Novels are pieces of art, and so our appreciation of them will be predicated on our understanding of the artists’ intentions.  In these cases, the artists’ intentions were not to inspire but to deceive.  For that reason, the works will be forever hollow.