Washblog

Like James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, Barrus' book is sordid and full of details that one would think would ring false at least in the aggregate. Aside from the more universal standards of verisimilitude, Alexie points out that, for people familiar with the Navajo culture, the book was clearly ersatz.

And the publisher was told. Mr. Alexie notified Houghton Mifflin when the book was in galley stages that it was fake and a probable plagiarism of his own work. He was ignored. The book was followed by two others, published by Random House/Ballantine (which also published the faked up 1996 Sleepers -- and refused to withdraw it when confronted with the fraud as discussed recently on blatherWatch.) A Houghton Mifflin spokesperson, Anton Mueller, is quoted in the LA Weekly article: “As you know, we don’t fact-check books.” Do publishers have no responsibility for such fact-checking? I worked for a couple of years as a volunteer book reviewer -- and I had cause to wonder about that then too. Surely, truth matters to us all. Surely, publishers care about their own credibility?

It is an appropriate task for the progressive community, I think, to call out lies like this. As Mr. Alexie notes in the LA Weekly article, they are horribly destructive:

The last act of colonialism is for the dominant culture to completely supplant the Native one," says Alexie. "Nasdijj is disappearing people. With every book he writes he makes Indians disappear."

Ah, heartbreaker. Our humanity disappears too as "the dominant culture" so casually disregards the line between truth and fiction, tempts us ever further from reality. The cultural lies are not unrelated to the political lies that have us paying for torture with our tax dollars & etc.

I guess I'll pack up this post and mail it to:

Houghton Mifflin
222 Berkeley Street
Boston, MA 02116
617-351-5000