\u201cThe Salt Path is an unflinchingly honest, inspiring and life-affirming true story,\u201d reads the description of Raynor Winn\u2019s bestselling memoir on its publisher Penguin Random House\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Which is unfortunate wording if accusations made at the weekend turn out to be true: an investigation by the Observer<\/a> alleged that the 2018 book \u2013 which has recently been adapted into a film starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs<\/a> \u2013 is not all that it seems. Winn writes in The Salt Path that she and her husband, Moth, had their home repossessed due to an investment in a friend\u2019s company that went on to fail. With nowhere to live, as she tells it, the couple decided to walk the length of the South West Coast Path, wild camping along the way and relying on the kindness of strangers. The Observer piece suggests Winn\u2019s account of becoming homeless is untruthful, and reports that she took \u00a364,000 from her former employer. It also questions the legitimacy of Moth\u2019s diagnosis with the neurological condition corticobasal degeneration (CBD), a core part of the memoir.<\/p>\n Winn\u2019s immediate response called the article \u201chighly misleading\u201d, adding: \u201cWe are taking legal advice and won\u2019t be making any further comment at this time.\u201d She stood by her book being \u201cthe true story of our journey\u201d. Still, after the report, PSPA, a charity that supports people with CBD and formerly worked with Winn and her husband, terminated its relationship<\/a> with the couple.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Winn published a more detailed statement<\/a>, defending her book\u2019s truthfulness and giving more detail about the events that led to the couple losing their home. She also provided medical letters addressed to her husband in defence of allegations relating to his illness.<\/p>\n This is not the first time a much-hyped memoir has come up against accusations of lying. Belgium-born Misha Defonseca\u2019s 1997 book<\/a> about how she was raised by wolves during the second world war turned out to be completely fabricated. Love and Consequences by Margaret B Jones<\/a>, which was sold on release in 2008 as the true story of the author\u2019s experience growing up as a mixed-race foster child in South Central Los Angeles, turned out to have been written by Margaret Seltzer, a white, privately educated woman who grew up with her biological family.<\/p>\n James Frey at the Union Chapel, London, in 2011. Photograph: David Levene\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Perhaps the most famous instance is James Frey\u2019s A Million Little Pieces<\/a>, a 2003 memoir of drug addiction and alcoholism that, after being championed by Oprah Winfrey in 2005, shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and remained there for 15 weeks. It was billed as \u201cbrutally honest\u201d, but later it came to light that chunks of the book had been made up. Winfrey in particular was furious with Frey, telling him it was difficult to talk to him when he came on her TV show to explain himself in 2006. \u201cI feel duped,\u201d she said. \u201cBut more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow could they lie?\u201d is a question many readers ask when a memoir they love is proved to be untrue. But there\u2019s another question that needs to be answered, too: how could the author get away with it? How did they manage to get their lies past an agent and multiple editors, all the way into a published book labelled as a true story?<\/p>\n The short answer is that if someone is lying about their own life, it is often very difficult for others to tell. Dr Pragya Agarwal, the author of books including the 2021 memoir (M)otherhood<\/a> and a teacher of memoir writing, says that a big part of writing nonfiction \u201cis about trust between the writer and the reader. I am not really sure how someone\u2019s life story can be factchecked in its entirety.\u201d<\/p>\n Others say it is not the publisher\u2019s role to investigate whether an author is telling the truth or not. Grace Pengelly is a freelance writer and editor who formerly worked as a nonfiction commissioning editor at HarperCollins. An editor\u2019s role \u201cis to help the author craft their story as compellingly and accurately as possible\u201d, she says, and that requires believing in the writer. \u201cWithout a certain degree of trust from the outset, it is difficult for an editor and author to work with each other effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n That doesn\u2019t mean that memoirs are not fact-checked. \u201cPrior to acquiring a memoir, a publisher would look into the background of the author and their story to see if it checks out,\u201d says Pengelly. Any \u201cquestion marks around the veracity of an author\u2019s story would definitely be a reason why a publisher wouldn\u2019t offer on a book\u201d. But the research undertaken at this stage wouldn\u2019t tend to involve checking whether someone was actually incarcerated for as long as they said they were (one of the major falsities in A Million Little Pieces), or whether a couple who claimed to be homeless actually owned a property in the south of France, as was alleged by the Observer regarding Winn and her husband (a property Winn has since described as an \u201cuninhabitable ruin\u201d).<\/p>\n Raynor and Moth Winn. Photograph: Jim Wileman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Finding out that kind of information might be possible only if publishers had specific teams dedicated to it. The publishing consultant and editor Katy Loftus, who previously worked for Penguin Random House, says she isn\u2019t aware of any publishing houses with a factchecking department. \u201cOther than top executive salaries, publishing is run on a shoestring. Books make much less money than people think,\u201d she says. The big publishers have legal departments, \u201cwho will give an opinion on something flagged up to them by a commissioning editor, and occasionally do a complete legal read if requested\u201d, she adds. But the main factchecking responsibility tends to fall to the commissioning editors, who are \u201cresponsible for hundreds of tasks\u201d \u2013 from briefing book cover designers, to negotiating deals with authors, to managing teams of people. The editing itself \u201cis often at the bottom of the list, and factchecking is only part of the editing process.\u201d<\/p>\n Even when it comes to legal checks, the main concern is that a book doesn\u2019t contain anything that might lead to the publisher being sued, rather than actually analysing the factual content, says Ian Bloom, a media lawyer who has worked in publishing. \u201cTo some extent, nobody much cares if they\u2019ve got dates wrong and facts wrong, as long as there\u2019s no legal implications.\u201d<\/p>\n Bloom suspects that a number of celebrity memoirs in particular contain omissions or embellishments. \u201cThere\u2019s no real harm done if they gloss over certain things in their lives,\u201d he says, as long as it\u2019s not defamatory to anyone else.<\/p>\n Aside from rare exceptions \u2013 such as when a group of readers successfully sued Frey\u2019s publisher<\/a>, claiming they were defrauded as they bought his book under the impression that it was true, and were refunded the cover price \u2013 publishers do not face serious material repercussions for lies told in memoirs. Reputational damage, meanwhile, is usually put on the author. \u201cWhen an author signs a contract with a publisher, there are usually author covenants that include clauses about the truthfulness and integrity of the material to the best of the author\u2019s knowledge and belief,\u201d Bloom says. The publisher is then entitled to cancel that author\u2019s contract, should a book\u2019s veracity be called into question.<\/p>\n Of course, authors can get around this by writing \u201cautobiographical fiction\u201d rather than memoir: books such as the actor Carrie Fisher\u2019s Postcards From the Edge, based on her own life but categorised as a novel, or the Booker-winning autofictional novel Shuggie Bain<\/a> by Douglas Stuart, don\u2019t come under fire for being made up, because we all know that\u2019s what fiction is. So why didn\u2019t authors like Frey turn their stories into novels? Perhaps the books wouldn\u2019t have done as well marketed in that way \u2013 in a true-crime-obsessed world, we\u2019re all familiar with the strength of desire for real stories. <\/strong>\u201cAutofiction isn\u2019t as well-established a genre as memoir,\u201d Pengelly says. \u201cSo marketing teams face discrete challenges in framing and taking these stories to the public. A \u2018true story\u2019 has historically proved easier to build a campaign around.\u201d<\/p>\n Once a book is out in the world, any inaccuracies tend to be spotted by journalists or academics \u2013 there is no regulator of the publishing industry equivalent to the Independent Press Standards Organisation <\/strong>and Ofcom for the media in the UK. With approximately 200,000 books published<\/a> annually in the UK alone, \u201cThere\u2019s no regulator on Earth who can read them all \u2026 it\u2019s impossible,\u201d Bloom says.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n So how do we stop fake memoirs from being published? In light of the Salt Path allegations, Pengelly is sure publishers will be considering ways to avoid such a scenario coming up again. \u201cIf a narrative arc seems too neat and tidy to be true, perhaps it\u2019s worth considering why, and employing a freelance factchecker to investigate,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Winn on her travels in south-west England.<\/p>\n The trouble is, neat and tidy narrative arcs are often exactly what many readers \u2013 and viewers of film adaptations \u2013 want. A memoir Pengelly worked on, Zig-Zag Boy by Tanya Frank<\/a>, is about a mother coming to terms with her son\u2019s experiences of psychosis. That book was a more modest commercial success than The Salt Path, but could it have been more of a hit if Frank had ended it with her son being \u201chealed\u201d, rather than with her accepting his altered state? Quite possibly. Triumph in the face of medical adversity is a seductive concept, as readers of Winn\u2019s books will know from their stories of Moth\u2019s ability to overcome the symptoms of his illness and undertake long walks.<\/p>\n Nic Wilson<\/a>, whose memoir Land Beneath the Waves is about how the natural world helped her to navigate and accept her chronic illness, is disparaging of the \u201cnature cure\u201d trope we often see in popular books about health. It creates an unrealistic expectation that the order of events should be \u201cdiagnosis, illness, recovery. And I think readers come to expect that,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Clearly, authors may have something to gain by bowing to such expectations and embellishing or omitting certain facts of their life stories. But they also have the most to lose if lies in their books are exposed: they could have their publishing deal dropped, which might mean having to pay back their advance, and they risk no publisher wanting to be associated with them again.<\/p>\n Frey\u2019s publisher, Nan Talese, was particularly aggrieved by the way her author\u2019s reputation was attacked. Winfrey displayed \u201cfiercely bad manners \u2013 you don\u2019t stone someone in public, which is just what she did\u201d, she told the Dallas Morning News<\/a> at the time.<\/p>\n If a narrative arc seems too neat and tidy to be true, perhaps it\u2019s worth considering why<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cScandal has stalked memoir since the genre was invented,\u201d Loftus says \u2013 an early example being the 1836 memoir Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, a 20-year-old woman\u2019s story of life in a Montreal convent, which was vilified as a hoax. \u201cIn practice the publicity rarely does more harm than good to the publisher, whereas an author\u2019s life can be left in tatters.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that they won\u2019t continue to make money: A Million Little Pieces kept selling even in its second iteration, which had passages rewritten and contained a \u201cnote to the reader\u201d addressing its inaccuracies. And whatever happens after the allegations made against Winn, having already sold more than 2m copies of The Salt Path, she has been made rich by this book and its sequels, and will continue to receive royalties for as long as people keep buying them.<\/p>\n The fact that there is money to be made \u2013 with very few legal repercussions \u2013 by telling the most marketable version of a story, rather than the true one, makes it difficult to believe that this controversy will be the last of its kind. After all, no memoir can be completely true. \u201cMemories are fallible and selective; we always remember half-truths, and the story an author chooses to tell is only ever one story of a particular situation,\u201d Agarwal says. \u201cBut what any reader wants to believe is that the story they have put their faith in is closest to the writer\u2019s truth, that they have not been deliberately misled, that they have not been manipulated. This is essential.\u201d<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Salt Path is an unflinchingly honest, inspiring and life-affirming true story,\u201d reads the description of Raynor Winn\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-253441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}