Another Million Little Pieces

Yet another literary hoax or fraud has been uncovered in the publishing field. And, once again, Oprah Winfrey has played a role in promoting and marketing it.

With memories of James Frey’s fiction-peddled-as-fact A Million Little Pieces still fresh in many readers’ minds comes the revelation that the Holocaust love story of Herman and Rosa Rosenblat, scheduled to have been published in book form next month by Berkley under the title Angel at the Fence, is at least substantially the product of Herman’s imagination.

Details of the story as revealed on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” had troubled some Holocaust scholars for a while, but it was the persistent objections of Professor Ken Waltzer, the director of the Jewish Studies program at Michigan State University, that led to a written retraction by Herman Rosenblat last week. He confessed that the story of how he met his wife in a concentration camp was an invention.

For publishers Berkley, indignation, a hasty cancellation of February’s release of the title, and an angry demand for the return of all advance monies from the author and his agent, Andrea Hurst, has obscured their responsibility in the near-publication of a work of fiction in the guise of biography.

The questions arise once again: how much responsibility falls on the shoulders of the publisher to ensure that a work promoted as factual conforms strictly to the truth? Few would argue that Berkley should rely strictly on the word of the author and agent as to the veracity of the story being offered, but how far should due diligence extend? If an alarm bell goes off in reading the manuscript, what obligation does the publisher bear in proving or disproving the claims of the author?

What portion of the burden should be borne, if any, by the literary agent peddling the work? Is there any ethical responsibility on the part of any of the parties in relation to the readers? And hasn’t Oprah learned her lesson yet? She’s done a tremendous job in promoting literature, authors, and the publishing industry, but what responsibility does she bear to determine the authenticity of a work? Is the science of fact-checking dead?

I’d be interested in the reader’s opinions on these questions.


Another Million Little Pieces
1 January 2009