Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic EvolutionSM
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Books Roger's Recommended Reading! |
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Although it's probably not evident, I've been an avid reader most of my life in addition to having interviewed many authors for my radio program at KGNU. Although all of the authors I've interviewed were honest and honorable, it was revealed in January 2006 that some authors (for example, James Frey of A Million Little Pieces, "JT Leroy" of Sarah fame, and others...) had fabricated portions of their books and memoirs. Although the outcry died down rather quickly I, myself, remained angered by it. To me, every attempt should be made to ensure memoirs, biographies, and other historical pieces be as accurate as humanly possible. The idea that certain facts, figures, or other aspects of somebody's life should be "spiced-up" for increased profit (or any other reason) is not only unacceptable but is a breach of ethics as well. |
"This week it was revealed that the memoir Love and Consequences by Margaret Jones, who said that she grew up wild in south-central L.A., ran with gangs and peddled drugs, was actually written by Margaret Seltzer who grew up in the suburbs and only ran through the Sherman Oaks shopping mall. The book is a fraud but Ms. Seltzer came within hours of being on NPR, probably a lot of other places, recalling her life as a drug pusher."[this sentence was the author, herself, speaking] "I think I thought it was a honor you look around and everybody is doing dirt-bad and you have hand-me-down shoes and clothes and the kids at school are making fun of you, and you have a chance to get some little money and get some nice clothes?
"Now if some Brooklyn or London novelist had written a story set among drug gangs, and uttered those words, people might have dismissed them as pretentious nonsense. Put those sentences into a so-called memoir people call it gritty and real, or raw, tender and tough-minded like the New York Times did.
"The list of fake memoirs is getting long enough to need their own shelves. Last week Misha [and the Wolves], a memoir of the holocaust years, by a woman who claimed she lived with packs of wolves to survive the holocaust, was revealed to be a fraud though not before it earned more than 20 million dollars and got made into a movie. Hope the wolves got cut into the deal. Two years ago there was James Frye's A Million Little Pieces. This year troubling questions have been raised about Ishmael Beah's, A Long Way Gone, his memoir of being a child soldier. Ten years ago, prestigious journals published poems by a man billed as a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima he turned out to be a community college professor in Freeport, Illinois.
Now, I don't decry phony memoirs as a journalist, so much as someone who is also a novelist. So I cringe every time someone suggests these frauds should simply have been labeled novels. Novels just don't spill out of people like uncorked champagne. They take craft and discipline - not just empathy and imagination. Readers have a right to expect style and skill in a novel. The people who wrote these frauds knew that if they had presented their books as novels they would have had to withstand a whole different kind of criticism. What critic will bash the literary style of a memoir by someone who was suckled by wolves, ran with gangs, or was dragooned into being a child soldier. Calling these books memoirs allows their flaws to masquerade as proof that they're raw and real. A novelist knows that if his characters are honest they take hold of a story and can live on in a reader's mind, but a phony memoir gives you characters that just make you feel cheated and deceived - you just wanted them to go away..."
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My complaint also extends to modern journalism where it's been revealed that some opinion writers have been influenced by outside money, and "Video News Releases," yet had not disclosed the possible conflict. Click Here to find out more from my Media page... |
I estimate that by age 50 I had read about 500 books, not counting required reading for school and college. Not many, by some standards, but a lot for a person who was busy raising a family, earning a living, climbing, and volunteering as an environmental activist.It was sometime around age 12 or 13 that I started reading outdoors and adventure books. The ones I remember best, 35 years later as I make this entry(!) were Stars, Mosquitoes and Crocodiles (The American Travels of Alexander Von Humboldt, edited by Millicent E. Selsam), Lost in the Jungle (Paul Du Chaillu's 1902 classic), and My Side of the Mountain by Jean George (I must have read it at least a half dozen times!). Also, sometime around then, I read Flowers for Algernon (by Daniel Keyes), Geroge Orwell's Animal Farm, and Lord of the Flies (William Golding) - admittedly some of these last three were probably inspired by school projects, etc.
During my teens, and early 20s, I read mostly Science Fiction (Isaac Azimov's I, Robot and the Foundation series, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Larry Niven's Ringworld, Frank Herbert's Dune, etc.) and a lot of stuff on nature (Henry David Thoreau) or hiking (Colin Fletcher's 1,000 Mile Summer and The Man Who Walked Through Time). It was also during that period that my tastes turned toward work like Joseph Heller's Catch 22, Abbey Hoffman's Steal this Book, and Robert Shrader's Electronic Communication (at the time I was preparing myself for the amateur radio Extra class examination and various FCC commercial licenses...).
From 1981 through about 2006 I actually kept a relatively accurate list of many of the books I had read during that period (age 25 through 50). I know that there probably isn't anything more boring than reviewing somebody else's reading list but maybe parts of mine might prove interesting or useful, however, posted here mostly to remind me as I get older!
Some of what I've listed below, like the Odyssey or Wuthering Heights and other classics, were repeats from my youth that I thought I'd read again for a better appreciation. Other selections, like the Hitler and Turner Diaries stuff were brief studies in evil that fall under the Chinese saying of "Know your enemy..." Still others, like the "get-rich-quick" selections were either related to youthful greed or somehow associated with my college business classes - very boring but still read in total in the interests of "science." And, as I mentioned earlier, I had the pleasure (and privilege!) of interviewing various authors for my radio program - the vast majority of those readings were pure joy and I am very lucky to have spent time with such fine writers!
- Roger J. Wendell
Golden, Colorado
"I'm not so optimistic that the book publishing industry will remain operating the way it has very much futher into the future. Way too many books are published these days, and the American public is reading measurably less than ever."- James Howard Kunslter, The Long Emergency
(Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other
Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century), p. 306
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Special List:
Books Highly Recommended... |
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Quarter Century Snapshot:
Here's a list of most of books I read, for recreational purposes, over a 25 year period. Prior to that it hadn't occurred to me to write down or record anything I was reading. After that period I was either too busy, or too lazy, to continue the recordkeeping... |
Okay, I realize an average of 1.14 books per month, over a 25 year period, isn't much by the standards of "real" readers! But hey, think of all the newspapers, textbooks, magazines, and web pages I devoured over that period as well!
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