Wow, what a busy week for literary controversies! First, it's discovered that James Frey, author of the horrific drug-recovery memoir A Million Little Piecees (a national bestseller and Oprah pick) exaggerated and sometimes made up huge sections of that book's content - including its main selling point, that he's a tough-as-fuck badass who likes fighting with cops and doesn't get along with anyone. And then second, it turns out that JT Leroy, yet another "troubled youth with a checkered past," who also wrote a series of horrific memoirs about his experiences, isn't actually a real person at all - that the memoirs were actually written by a well-to-do middle-aged couple, who used a family member to stand in for Leroy at public appearances. Wow!

And I hate to have to be the one always pointing out the obvious at this site (no, seriously, I do - I much rather wish that people were simply smarter as a whole), but this entire mess could've been so completely and utterly avoided, just by doing one teeny-tiny little thing - of putting the words "A Novel" on the front cover of those books, instead of the words "A Memoir." And I mean, seriously, that's it - you wouldn't have to change the manuscript, you wouldn't have to change the cover art, you wouldn't have to change any single other aspect of those books in order to have avoided this mess in the first place. So why were the books falsely published as memoirs anyway? Well, that's a pretty obvious answer, based both on all these news reports I've been reading and just what I can see around me - that memoirs are hot, and novels aren't, and it's much easier to sell a horrific story when people think it actually happened.

Which of course leads me again to the question I used to ask myself over and over, back when I was pursuing a career as a novelist myself - why is this? What is this hangup that so many otherwise very smart people have about literature, that a story couldn't possibly be worth reading unless it is a verbatim transcript of something that actually happened in real life? I had to deal with this over and over again when I was a fiction writer myself, and to this day it's still something that confuses, frustrates and angers me. I mean, let's just take the slam poetry I wrote back then for a very good example of what I'm talking about; because the fact is that a lot of my slam poems are in actuality fictional stories, things that never "actually" happened to me, or at least in terms of how we usually define "actually."

And so, for example, back in 1999 I performed my story "The Tao of Van Halen" at the Albuquerque Poetry Festival (one of these fictional pieces I'm talking about), where it first came to the attention of my friend Michelle Tea and the other ladies of the San Francisco dyke poetry troupe Sister Spit. So then a year later I run into Michelle again, and she starts telling me about how her and the other Sister Spit ladies actually rented the "Panama" video I talk about in that story, and actually timed the video with a stopwatch, and actually paused it on exactly the 89th second like I tell people to do in the story, but that they couldn't find me in the crowd, like I had claimed.

So I explained to Michelle that the story was fictional, and suddenly she was legitimately pissed off (albeit in this jokey way), and admitted that the story no longer meant as much to her as it did before. But why should that be? That story is true, in that some of the things mentioned actually did happen to me as a youth, just at other concerts besides a Van Halen one. And the story is "true" in that other things mentioned there actually did happen to my brother, who really was a metalhead in high school and really did run around smoking pot in the backseat of a '74 Nova. And it's also "true" in that the descriptions of clothing and the like are spot-on remembrances of what it was like to be a metalhead in the '80s, which I think is one of the reasons that piece continues to be so popular.

But here's the most important point - that the story is "true" in that the emotional core of the story is true, in that it is an entirely accurate reflection of what an important thing rock concerts are to most youth, no matter what the age or what music that particular person is into. The reason that story gets such a strong reaction from so many people, I think, is that it cuts right to what it's like to be a teen and to worship a musician, to spend weeks psyching yourself up for that musician's upcoming live concert, to partly base your entire identity on what bands you choose to listen to, all of which are things most of us slowly lose as we get older and older.

So is that emotional connection no longer there for a reader, just because I didn't actually go to a Van Halen concert? That's the part of all this that I have such a hard time understanding - of why people feel that that connection they have with a story, that universal element that speaks to them in this almost subconscious way, the memories and feelings and emotions that get dragged to the surface as a result, somehow all become completely invalid if the story itself is anything besides a literal minute-by-minute transcription of something that actually happened in the real world.

I think this is something to be celebrated in a writer, frankly - that they're talented enough, smart enough, to basically whip up a story out of complete thin air, that is yet so emotionally true that it can affect you just as profoundly as a true story. This is a difficult thing to accomplish, people! Because let's fae it, most true stories actually kind of suck out loud, when related by people who aren't writers themselves. A manuscript needs a hell of a lot more than an interesting hook or trainwreck of a plot to be a legitimately good piece of literature; it needs to be honed, and it needs to be edited, and things that slow down the pacing need to be eliminated, and things to speed up the pacing need to be invented. That writer not only has to tell their story, but they need to convince the reader why it should matter to them - of how it relates to their own life, even if at first they might not see it themselves. And this is not an easy thing to do, as anyone who's actually tried writing a manuscript will tell you - in fact, it can be very, very difficult sometimes, and most often is a direct reflection of how much time, work, energy and study that writer is willing to invest into making themselves a better writer.

I guess that's what pisses me off so much about people who are into "found art" - you know, those pretentious schmucks who will only buy a painting if it's been done by some retarded chicken farmer in rural Alabama, those hipster doofuses who won't attend live literary events unless it's a bunch of people reading love letters from teenagers that they found in the alley behind their building. That kind of attitude is a complete fucking insult to those who choose to be artists; a complete slap in the face to those who spend all that time, energy, money and work, trying to make themselves better storytellers than they were before.

I guess the idea is that such found art supposedly holds more authenticity than something deliberately created by an artist, that it's somehow more "real" and therefore more worth our admiration. But I hope that I've kinda proven my point today, which is that such an attitude is bullshit - that it's actually the emotional core of a story that is most important, most "real," of whether it speaks to you, of whether it makes you see the world in a different way than you did before reading it. If you cried while originally reading A Million Little Pieces, does that mean that the sadness you experienced is now no longer "real?" If that book made you understand your own addictive behavior more, is that addiction no longer real? If it helped you understand the actions of an addicted friend you may have had in the past, is that understanding no longer real?

I mean, don't get me wrong - it was ridiculous that these books were presented to the public as memoirs, and all the parties involved should rightly be punished for it. I guess I just find it sad that such people would have to do something like that in the first place, just to get noticed anymore in the fickle world of commercial literature. What a shame that A Million Little Pieces couldn't have just been published as a novel and still had millions of fans and gotten picked for Oprah's Book Club and all the rest - what a shame that the world has come to this, that every fucking thing in the arts now has to be a reality show for people to even consider taking it seriously.

And, um, that's all I have to say about that.

And some random notes as well, as long as I'm here...

--So did I mention that I'm thinking of going bicycling again soon? Yeah, I know, bicycling in Chicago in January - you wouldn't think such a thing would even be possible. Thankfully, though, the temperatures here have been profoundly warmer this year than they usually are (in fact, we're having the warmest January right now that Chicago's seen since 1871), with it today for example being a wonderful 48 degrees (9 C). And as weird as this is for someone like me to admit, I actually find myself missing bicycling! Yeah, I know, who in a million fuckin' years would've ever guessed Jason Pettus getting addicted to exercise and healthy living? So anyway, we'll see if I actually get off my ass and get my bike out soon, I guess.

--So, I finally got some filters set up for my Gmail account for the first time - and it was a ridiculously easy thing to do, too, which is why I thought I'd mention it. See, for those who don't know, one of the features of Gmail is the ability to run what they call "filters," which are in actuality small macros and other automated tasks that you can define on a case-by-case basis, kind of like setting up an "Action" in Photoshop. So, for example, regular readers know that I'm one of those "Getting Things Done" time-management dorks, and GTD people know that part of that process is setting up what's called a "to-do" file - basically, a folder in your email account where you can easily send messages that need to be acted on. And regular readers will also know that I'm a big RSS junkie, but that I read them through my mobile device, and that I often come across things in my feeds that I would need a desktop computer to actually accomplish (like notices about new software downloads, notices about new podcast episodes, etc).

So what I did, then, was set up a filter at my Gmail account, that will automically add a "to-do" label and then automatically archive the email, anytime the email's address contains the qualifier "+td." So now when I'm in Bloglines on my mobile device, and want to save an item for recalling the next time I'm at an internet cafe, all I have to do is email the item to myself, but now sending it to 'ilikejason+td' instead of just 'ilikejason.' And now, instead of me having to go back in afterwards, manually add that "to-do" tag, and manually move that email to my archives, Gmail does it all automatically. Pretty cool, and completely flawless, so I thought I'd just let others know about it, in case you too were curious about Gmail filters but hadn't yet sat down and fucked with them.

--Dude, I saw Napolean Dynamite for the first time ever last week...then immediately started up the movie again, the moment the end credits started, and watched the whole damn thing over again. Oh. My. Lord! That was one of the most entertaining movies I've seen in years and years and years. And did you know, by the way, that the female lead in that movie (Tina Majorino, she of the sideways ponytail) is the same actress who played the little girl in Waterworld? Or that she's a very popular indie-rock musician in Los Angeles as well? Or that I'm love with her? Well, okay, you probably guessed that last one already.