{"id":126,"date":"2006-02-02T23:52:26","date_gmt":"2006-02-03T04:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/?p=126"},"modified":"2020-01-02T11:27:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T16:27:20","slug":"the-literary-assumption-of-victimhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/the-literary-assumption-of-victimhood\/","title":{"rendered":"The “literary assumption of victimhood”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow. I swear, that phrase was on the tip of my tongue, and I discover that it’s been said. By “the British writer and psychologist Anthony Daniels” (aka Theodore Dalrymple) and quoted in a Washington Post<\/em> piece by Anne Applebaum, who notes that James Frey is only the newest in a history of lying memoirists:<\/p>\n

These fabricators reinvent themselves not as heroes but as victims, a status they sometimes attain by changing their ethnicity. Among them are Bruno Grosjean, aka Binjamin Wilkomirski, whose touching, prize-winning, “autobiographical” tale of a childhood spent in the Majdanek concentration camp turned out to be the fantasy of the adopted son of a wealthy Swiss couple. Another was Helen Darville, aka Helen Demidenko, whose touching, prize-winning “autobiographical” tale of a Ukrainian girl whose father was a former SS officer turned out to be the fantasy of a middle-class British girl living in the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Applebaum next mentions Nasdijj, who was outed last week by Matthew Fleisher at LA Weekly<\/em>. Nasdiff — real name, Tim Barrus — had been posing as a Navajo memoirist. To much critical aclaim.<\/p>\n

Fleisher interviews a real Navajo who mentions that Nasdijj isn’t even a real name in the Navajo tongue of Athabaskan. It’s gibberish.<\/p>\n

Alrighty, then, here are my questions. What would drive a writer to assume the identity of a martyr in order to attract attention? Is it a variation of Munchausen syndrome<\/a>? Or are these people simply afraid to achieve excellence as an expression of personal triumph? That is, is this a way for gifted writers to avoid feeling guilty about their gifts?<\/p>\n

More posts on James Frey here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update: Esquire wrote a piece on Barrus…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow. I swear, that phrase was on the tip of my tongue, and I discover that it’s been said. By “the British writer and psychologist Anthony Daniels” (aka Theodore Dalrymple) and quoted in a Washington Post piece by Anne Applebaum, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[567,566,565,568,569,471,563,564],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-writing","tag-binjamin-wilkomirski","tag-bruno-grosjean","tag-fabrications","tag-helen-darville","tag-helen-demidenko","tag-james-frey","tag-nasdijj","tag-tim-barrus"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5744,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions\/5744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirstenmortensen.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}