True stories of atrocity draw their impact from the fact that they actually happened. We empathize with the characters because they are or were real. If I want to read about misery that didn’t happen, I’ll swing by Fan-Fiction.net and check out some Harry Potter slash, (or if I want to be a little more literate, read some Joyce Carol Oates). That’s not going to happen, though, because catharsis that isn’t grounded in reality is a huge waste of my time.

If this exact same story were presented as fiction, it could potentially have value, of course — if it were well-written — which, not having read it, I can’t comment upon.

There are worthwhile, fictional tales of survival (J. P. Stassen’s Deogratias, from First Second, for instance), and the truths you can find in it are of a general nature: about Rwanda itself, its culture, its depiction of how things happened in the genocide and its aftermath…

How would you feel about the story, though, if it were originally presented as being complete fiction? Would it have value then?

Fiction is NOT the same thing as a lie.

When Hollywood adapts a story, they at least admit it when they change shit — not always on screen, but off. The key is where the point of a story lies: if the substance of her story is to say (essentially) “truth is stranger than fiction,” as it is in Misha, but the story is a lie, then it serves no function and is useless.

In fiction, the point is “to admire it intensely,” as Oscar Wilde said of all art: for its storytelling, its artifice… characters, plot, any number of things. In memoirs — in all non-fiction — it is to convey literal, factual truth. Nobody says, “You know, those articles by Jayson Blair were plagiarized and partly made up, but gosh, they were well-written.” Why should you make apologies for this woman? THAT’S riduculous. Non-fiction is badly written if it is full of lies, by its very definition.

Okay, here’s an example:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — the film — was fictionalized from the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby. The point of the memoir was, “I had a stroke, got completely paralyzed except for one eye, and I wrote a book about it by blinking his left eye — seriously!” In the movie, the man’s wife stands by him after the stroke, and his mistress never visits him. In the book (and in life), his mistress stayed by his side, not his wife. The book even adds an extra child, for some reason I can’t fully comprehend.

While they bothered me, these changes — these lies, if you get down to it — were tolerable because they were not the substance of the film. The substance is — “a guy has a stroke, is completely paralyzed except for one eye, and he writes a book by blinking his left eye — holy shit!” — is true and therefore valuable.

The substance of Misha was a complete lie, and therefore it is worthless.

That has got to be the most ridiculous statement I’ve ever read. You say it as if you believe that there are no lies in memoirs, as if autobiographies are all pinnacles of truth. Please, do you think there are no fish stories in autobiographies?

Any story that generates an emotional response in the reader or viewer has value. Sure, you may feel betrayed by the premise going in, but that’s baggage you’ve brought with you.

You’re getting pissed an an author for doing to her own life story what Hollywood has been doing to “True Stories” for years.