I cringed as I read the book jacket blurb calling the recently unmasked fake memoir "an unvarnished look at inner-city life beyond the statistics and stereotypes."
On the back cover were tributes to the author's "pitiless intelligence and scathing honesty."
"Margaret Jones uses her own life to tear down the walls between South Central and the world beyond," wrote one. Said another, "My God, Margaret is brave."
Turns out Margaret is neither brave nor honest. Nor is she a half-white, half-Native American girl raised among black gang members in a South Los Angeles foster home.
Margaret Jones is actually Margaret "Peggy" Seltzer, who grew up white and middle-class on a cul-de-sac in Sherman Oaks. Her education didn't come on the streets, but in a private school that counts Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen (and my oldest daughter) among its graduates.
Seltzer's book "Love and Consequences" is a fabrication. The hoax, which came to light this week, is a big-time scandal among the literati. Seltzer's agent and editor said they were duped. Readers wondered why the publisher didn't fact-check.
I read the book this week with the luxury of knowing it was fiction. I found it superficial and melodramatic.
I give Seltzer credit for being curious enough to care about gang life and diligent enough to get the details right -- the clothes, the language, the recipe for turning powder cocaine into crack. And I give her props, as her fake homies might say, for trying to show that some gang members we fear are struggling brothers, fathers and sons, caught up in a mindless cycle of destruction.
So why am I so offended?
In "Love and Consequences" Seltzer describes a startling life -- rife with stereotypes -- as a white foster child sent to the "urban Third World country" of South Los Angeles.
Her "Big Mom" is a stoic, hard-working grandmother struggling to raise her crack-addicted daughter's four kids. Her "homies" are lovable rogues with hearts of gold who carry her backpack, escort her to the homecoming dance and enlist her to deliver their cocaine.
Seltzer was outed by her sister, who read a profile of her in the New York Times and called the book's publisher to say it was all a lie.
In a tearful apology, before she went into hiding, Seltzer defended herself, saying she was trying to help people she cared about by showing readers the harshness of their lives.
