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
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Here is the story: straight from the horse's mouth:
ReplyDeleteQUOTE: "Over at The New Republic blog The Plank, the magazine's
editors offer a helpful recap of *how* their reporter successfully
exposed a Holocaust memoir as a hoax."
It's true, Gabe Sherman did a terrific reporting job exposing how that
hoax memoir came to be. He deserves a Pulitzer award for that kind
reportage, really, because he took material supplied to him by several
sources and went even deeper and found amazing quotes from people
directly involved in the backstory, inforamtion that
nobody—nobody—ever knew for certain before—and certainly never said in
public before.
But there is one thing you should know, Sara, and I am sure Gabe won't
mind me telling tales out of school. Gabe never heard of Herman or his
cockamamie backstory before a reporter who had been investigating the
matter for 2 months, based in Taiwan, go figure, called Gabe up at
midnight and badgered, pestered and cajoled him for three days and
nights into agreeing to take on this "assignment".
What the TNR does not mention, not anywhere, I guess it is natural and
for promotioanl reasons of their own, is that their TNR reporter had
no idea about this "story" before he was contacted by me. And at
first, for the first two days of my barrage of emails and phone calls,
Gabe resisted, said he was busy with other things, and besides, how
did i know all these things—I knew, Sara, I knew, but according to my
promises to my sources deep with the investigation, I could not go
public with what I knew, and that's okay, from here in Taiwan, I did
not have a platform to publish what I knew anwyays.
So I spent 8 weeks trying to find a reporter in the USA who would
listen to me, and believe me, and act. Gabe, who didn't know me from
Adam, at first was skeptical of this unknown blogger in far away
Taiwan calling him at all times of the day, and badgering his email
box with over 5o emails of names, tips, addresses, phone numbers, the
whole megillah, and at one point, Gabe—and I love the guy, he is salt
of the Earth and an ace reporter and he did the perfect job, nobody
else in US journalism could do what he did on this story, and I deeply
respect and admire him—Gabe at one point in our phone chats told me to
stop bugging him, stop calling him, stiop emailing him, and to go
away.
Go away? No way. Not when I had the goods on Herman, and took it on as
my self appointed mission to try to stop that book from coming out
before it was published. Against the advice of those who were advising
me in the ongoing investigation group.
They told me to "chill" and "give it a rest, Danny" and "we aren't
ready yet to go to the media, our reserach wont' be ready until the
end of January"—and i understood their concerns, but i knew
instinctively, Ben that if the book was published, once it was out of
the warehouse and into the bookstores, the damage would be done, the
book would be very hard to stop, what with all the coming Oprah PR and
the book tours and all the AP and Reuters stories about this lovely
couple, so I acted alone, on my own heartfelt instinct, that the time
to act was ASAP.
I didn't know Gabe from Adam either. Never heard of him before. Of
course, I have been out of the USA for 20 years or so, so I am not
familiar with the new names in NYC and DC journalism, so I didn't know
him.
How did I find him? Good story, Sara, and glad you asked. ...[SMILE]
I was carrying out my investigation here in Taiwan of the Herman hoax
case using the internet and the blogosphere as my tools, plus my hunch
from the get go that the BLIND DATE part of the book was impossible,
not in this Universe, but a sweet touch, but completley off the wall,
so i was googling every search window I could find about earlier
hoaxes.
And i found one item about a book by a child soldier nbamed Ishamel
Beah, and there was a big to do about this in Slate magaizne, writteny
by, are you ready?—drum roll—Gabriel Sherman!
I think YOU were quoted in that story, too, Sara. Small world, getting
smaller every day.
So i emailed him in a jiffy, found his website and emailed him, and he
wrote back in Internet time, "Danny, sounds interesting, Call me or I
will call you."
Well, of course, he didn't call me. Nobody ever calls me back. Story
of my life. So I called him.... the very next day, and dished. I told
him everything I knew in a one hour phoen call,—My dime my time. He
said "all this is very interesting, Danny, but how do you know? It's
some people's word against Herman's word, and who are you? Why are you
so obessed with this story?"
So we said goodbye on the phone, I told him I would email him more
damning news tip I had in my files, from top historians involved in
the case, and he said, Okay, keep me informed.
I thought I had landed my fish, my big fish. The fish i needed to land
the final punch somewhere in thte USa media landscape.
The top reporters at the NY Times and your own PW would not answer my
emails at all at first and then eventaully the Times reporters just
said , Yeah, we know about this issue, but we are mulling it over.
"Mulling it over"? It will take too long to mull it over. We need to
act now. Before the book is out. stop it in its tracks. PW never
answered at all. Shame on PW! Fire them all! Kidding.
So I kept up my badgering campagn with dear ol' Gabe, who must be all
of 30, and here I am , all of 60, oi, and I never gave up. I knew he
was the guy to do this story, to pull the rabbit out of the hat, so to
speak, to lift the lid on this Pandora's Box of fabircations by a
sweet old man. I like Herman. I never had any animostiy against him. I
just wanted to epose the blind date thing.
That was my sticking point. that is was got me invovled in this, when
i read a newspaper acocunt from the AP on October 12 about Herman and
the applkes and Roma and the blind date. Impossible, i said. I called
the AP reporter in Miami who wrote the AP story and said Matt, this
could not be true.
He said,"Danny, it's what they told me. Who are we to question their
story? Until a smoking gun can be found, the media cannot report what
you are saying, Danny. Sorry."
So i started looking for the smoking gun. I found many. Not on my own.
I am no historian, no forensic expert, i am a nobody. Just a lone
blogger with a mission. So ....I alerted the media in the USa all of
October and November and early December. The entire USa media force,
including PW, ignored my emails and phone calls. The Miami Herald,
too. I spoke the features editor there, he said, "thanks for calling,
interesting news tips: but he never acted.. Just sat on this story..
anyways, back to gushing narrative of this story: I knew by Dec, 19 ,
i had to find a reporter , soon, do or die moment, so i kept bugging
Gabe until he finally said, "Look, Danny, you sound like a nice and
sane man, but please, enough of this calling me and emailing me
already...go away. leave me alone. I will make some calls, like you
suggested, using your leads and contacts, and let's see if there is a
story here."
The rest is history, cultural history of our times, sad tragic
Holocaust history, too, and GAbe made it happen. The man!
So that's the backstory of the backstory, and if you don't beleive a
word I typed, because most people never believe a word I say — I don't
know why, I am always right —.kidding -- in fact, i am often wrong --
....ask Gabe!.
He's on CNN and NPR and Canada TV now and it;s great. More power to
him. He helped expose a very sad and tragic episode in Jewish life.
And in American life and Oprah life. And in the publishing world. And
in Holocaust history.
I salute his groundbreaking reportage, and consider him my brother for
life! OKAY, enough of this tale told out of school.—Danny, checking in
from a small village in southern Taiwan where nobody ever heard of
Rosenblat and has no idea what I am doing in the Internet cafe every
day, moving on to other things now......
How's that for an interesting story,Sara, typed in a ligtning
speed,, typos and all, mis-spellings and all?
Carolina Blue
ReplyDeleteOne correction to the media frenzy. I know because I did it.
RE: "......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."
To be accurate, it was the persistent Internet objections and news articles online and media contacts to the USA media from a lone blogger in Taiwan that led the book being cancelled before publication. I began writing about this online on October 15. Nobody would listen to me. As the story above shows, I never gave up my quest to get the book stopped BEFORE publication. Dr Waltzer did alot of the research yes, along with a team of other PHD experts a very important team of forensic experts, all working together. But I am the one who blabbed the "news tipS" to the media for 8 solid weeks, with no response, until I found Gabriel Sherman at the New Republic who was willing to go out on a limb and delive into the story. Dr Waltzer did not want me to go to the media, he kept saying to me "CHILL DAN and GIVE IT A REST, we will finish all our research by the end of January". and "wait". I didn't take his advice. I went ahead with my own plan. This is what stopped the book before publication. By the end of January it would have been too late. The book would have been in everyone's hands. But yes, Dr Waltzer had been researching the backstory that Oprah told on TV for a long time, but in fact, he did not even know a book was coming out, a memoir, until I told him in an email on November 4. He said: "Really? I didn't know that."
But this background info is not important, Dr Waltzer did a lot of the important earlier research and with his PHD credentials the media that reported the story was able to take the hoax story seriously. Me, with no PHD and no academic cred, nobody listened to me. So I used my press contacts to get them to listen to someone they respected. The important thing was to stop the book before pub date. And we did it. And Gabe Sherman the NR reporter deserves a Pulitzer for his fine fine reporting that nailed it all. BrAVO.