More Fallout From the Faux Gang Memoir Incident
Posted on March 17, 2008
The New York Times public editor, Clark Hoyt investigates how the faux gangbanger memoir Love and Consequences by "Margaret B. Jones" slipped through the cracks and ended up with a glowing review from Michiko Kakutani.
Some bloggers have suggested that because the editor of Love and Consequences, Sarah McGrath, is the daughter of Charles McGrath, a Times writer-at-large who used to edit the Book Review, he must have played a part in getting the coverage.This strikes us as particularly absurd. Book reviewers review books. They are not investigative journalists. Reviewers must be able to rely on the press materials sent to them by publishers. To require them to act as a private detective on every debut memoir that comes in the door is nonsensical. Sadly, what this really means is that fewer new memoirs by unknown authors are going to be reviewed -- especially at the Times.He did not. He and Kakutani said they barely know each other and have never talked about what books to review. She works from home, seldom goes to the office and writes for the daily paper, not the section he edited. Kakutani said she did not even know McGrath had a daughter. McGrath said that because he is on the Times staff and sometimes writes about books, he and his daughter do not talk about her work and she had not told him the Jones memoir was hers.
Kakutani said she did not try to verify the account of Margaret B. Jones because Riverhead sent her a 10-page Q. and A. with the author, discussing her life story and the book. Kakutani assumed, she said, especially after the celebrated case of James Frey, who made up parts of his best-selling A Million Little Pieces, that "the publishers had vetted the book and that they had probably had lawyers review the book as well."