4 4B - Thursday, March 6, 2008 BOOKS NOTEBOOK -| ~ Books th at tell The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com I. us ies A good story is good whether it's true or not. Activism, with paint, song and scratching By KATIE CAREY are photo-based, but music helps. DailyArts Writer Music influences the energy of the moment; it stimulates the mind If you have higher expectations and often triggers creativity." for graffiti art than the "FRESH" In just three hours, Pendon will epidemic, you base his work on inspiring activist might want to and singer Radmilla Cody, a Nava- visit the Michi- inne jo activist who works on issues of gan Union Pendon domestic violence, environmental- tonight for a live ism and problems unique to Native performance Tonight at Americans. Cody, who struggled by graffiti art- 6p.m. to find her identity as a biracial ist Gene Pen- Aihe Michigan woman in the homogenous Navajo don. When the community, has created music that rash of amateur Free serves as a beacon through which scribbles around others can find strength. Ann Arbor just doesn't cut it, look to an artist who has established his roots in New York-style graffiti. "Art-I-FAKTS: (her) story 2" is She's singing and part of a Fighting Obstacles Know- ing Ultimate Success (F.O.K.U.S.), he's paintingbut Black Arts Council and National the art is in the Council of Negro Women event, where Pendon will create a live e n painting in the Union's Art Lounge to mark Women's History Month. Accompanied by the sounds of DJ Teddy Ruck-Spin (Disclosure: Ruck-Spin's alter ego, Ted Cul- Pendon's live art collective linane, sometimes writes for the Heavyweight Production House Daily's arts section), Pendon's specializes in just that: bringing work will lend itself to what he these "heavyweight" cultural icons considers a crucial aspect of his whether they're writers, painters, creations: music. musicians, or activists to life. Pendon's live painting began "It is an opportunity to feature as a way to pay the rent. Each someone and introduce their month, a community of artists story," Pendon said. "I think the in Montreal would throw a live idea behind Women's History painting night, where musicians Month is to draw awareness to performed and painters trans- issues and figures and create formed blank canvases into art. activism that will engage peo- Pieces were auctioned off at the ple." end of each night. This not only He's created installations along- earned Pendon the extra cash he side artists such as Afrika Bam- needed, but also gave him his first baataa, Pete Rock and Masters at look into the world of public art Work. performance. Becomingquitetheheavyweight "When we are doing live instal- himself, Pendon offers cultural lations, the music is part of the insight in the form of hyper-pop, room, and the art that is being cre- graffiti-based groove art murals ated is what is being experienced," that bring meaningful messages Pendon said. "It's not like a pan- to his audience and a style that is tomime to the music; the figures truly "fresh." By MARK SCHULTZ Daily Arts Writer According to The New York Times, Marga- ret B. Jones, author of "Love and Consequenc- es," a memoir about her life running drugs for the Bloods in South Central Los Angeles, has admitted to fabricating her entire story. Misha Defonseca, who published "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years" in 1997, also recently admitted to Slate.com that "Misha" is "not actual reality." These scandals broke just a cou- ple years after James Frey admitted to making up certain details of his 2003 memoir, "A Mil- lion Little Pieces," an incident which begat an average "South Park" episode. There are two basic sides to any argument about this kind of authorial deception. One would say the authors are fakes and deserve to have their books pulled from the shelves, their royalties seized by the I.R.S. and the need for carnivorous earwigs to be inserted into their brains. Another side would say: big deal. It's a story. It's still entertaining, so take it for what it is. I'll take a third side. This fabrication is emblematic of a larger problem in literature today. With fewer and fewer kids reading, pub- lishinghousesgoingoutofbusiness andthedays of the iconic novelist as dead as Norman Mailer, there's little room for the up-and-coming fiction writer to succeed. But everyone enjoys a good memoir. People love to read uplifting, inspira- tional stories. They're the slightlymore literary equivalent of watching the crack-addicted teen on "Maury" or "True Life" righthimself and re- enter society. Thanks to the emergence of reality shows on television, people want to see true stories. Bret Easton Ellis's fictional accounts of sex and violence in "American Psycho" don't titillate the American psyche like they used to. Instead, they need Tucker Max, who is like Patrick Bate-- man without the skull-fucking. The thing is, these purportedly true mem- oirs (the ones that haven't been proven false anyway) can't possibly be any truer, than, well, "True Life." "True Life," "Made" and other inspirational reality TV narratives almost cer- tainly use the same kind of behind-the-camera manipulation deployed in such farces as "Date My Mom" and "Next." Any memoir ever writ- ten will suffer from a different problem: No one (save Borges's "Funes the Memorious") can remember every detail of his or her life. Even Tucker Max, who carries a tape recorder with him everywhere he goes, admits on his own website that when he couldn't remember a detail, he just made it up. So why exactly are memoirs held up to a magnifying glass when no one cared that "Walk the Line" changed or left out a great number of facts from the two Johnny Cash autobiographies it was based on? My answer is not that the public feels betrayed by these liars, but that they feel betrayed by the mem- oir itself. These days, a film "based on a true story" will always gross more than a fictional one. This is, I imagine, why the Coen Brothers put that same tagline in "Fargo," even though that film was as fictional as "Beowulf." But the problem with memoirs is that the word itself carries a certain connotation that no film or TV show can. When someone reads a mem- oir, they expect a glimpse into reality. When memoirists take even minor factual liberties, the audience has lost their trust in - in this world of heavily-spun news media and manip- ulated reality shows - what they thought was one of the last bastions of brutal frankness in American pop-culture. In another world, Margaret B. Jones, who grew up in affluent Sherman Oaks, not East LA, might be lauded for constructing a story of inner-city life so convincing that her publish- ers never questioned its credibility. But instead, Jones is chastised for being creative, all because of the precious memoir, which vastly overrates absolute truth - something that since the age of Homer has never been essential or even worth- while ina compelling story. So when will this trend of glorifying true narratives as being so much better than fic- tional ones end? When writers like Jones don't feel they have to justify an invented story by pretending it's true. Until then, we'll have frus- trated novelists tweaking their stories into truthdom, all while we have to suffer the con- sequences. '44 4,s1rcE Ex14cea h Scholarships & Financial Aide Still Available! ww Jsaumich.edu/umbs .0 0