paralepsis

On NPR's Weekend Edition this morning, Scott Simon delivers a commentary about the recent exposure of gang-banger "memoir" Love and Consequences by Margaret Jones (actually Margaret Seltzer). Simon observes that "the book is a fraud, but Ms. Seltzer came within hours of of being on NPR." Wrong . In fact, Jones/Seltzer did make it onto NPR's syndicated show "On Point," and the show followed with an hour-long, hand-wringing examination of how they got punked in the first place. But that minor error is nothing compared to what happens next. Simon quotes Seltzer making up some bullshit about her life and observes (my transcript of the online audio): Now if some Brooklyn or London novelist had written a story set among drug gangs and uttered those words, people might have dismissed them as pretentious nonsense. Put those sentences into a so-called memoir, people call it "gritty and real," or "raw, tender, and tough-minded,...