The Pornography of Trauma: Faking Identity in Misery Memoirs

Abstract

Examining hoax memoirs by James Frey (2003), Dave Pelzer (1995), and Kathy O'Beirne (2006), this paper illustrates how anxieties about the inability of representation to provide a direct access to truth are mitigated via an emotional connection with the text. While the degree of faking varies, each scandal reveals concerns about authenticity and the need to find—or feel—something that can be accepted as unquestionably 'true'. The mimicking performed by a fake unsettles the boundaries between fact and fiction to reveal a public investment in an undisturbed effect of the real, a willingness to accept a blurring of 'truth' in the interests of the sensational experience of literature.