In The New York Times today, on the first page of the Arts section, comes a story by Motoko Rich about an essay written and posted on the web by Neale Donald Walsch, in which he recounted the supposedly true story of his son's Christmas pageant. During the pageant, the story goes, the children held up individual letters to spell out the words "Christmas Love."

    But one child mistakenly put up the "m" as a "w," instead spelling out "Christ Was Love." 

    Very sweet and touching. (Cue the "awwww.")

    Walsch had not only written this story, he'd been telling it in public during various speeches and lectures.  

    Except that, as the truth would have it, this story did NOT happen to the writer and his child.

    Instead, it happened to another writer, Candy Chand, and her son--20 years ago now. 

    It was her story. She first published it in 1999. It has been passed around on countless emails and in various blogs over the years, "sometimes without attribution," according to The Times. But it is quite clearly hers, and not someone else's.

    Somehow, Walsch internalized the story after he first read it (where, he cannot be sure), and made it his own. He's now publicly apologized for misrepresenting himself and for plagiarizing another writer's work, and his essay has been taken down from its original post. But Candy Chand isn't "buying it," as she told The Times.

    You can read the full Times story here. 

    This is yet another example of a much larger issue for readers of essays, books, and everything else: It's dangerous when writers claiming to write nonfiction not only stretch the truth but present absolute falsehoods as the truth.

    Recently, a Holocaust survivor named Herman Rosenblat claimed that a girl who later became his wife threw apples to him over a barbed-wire fence at the Schlieben concentration camp in Germany and helped save his life. The two later met on a blind date and married. His story was to be published as a memoir called The Angel at the Fence. Rosenblat has now admitted that chunks of his story were invented out of whole cloth--and the memoir has been canceled.

    The story had, however, already been published as an illustrated children's book this past September--and that book has now been canceled.

    We all love a good story, especially one beautifully written. Especially one that touches the heart. Especially one we want to believe.

    But: bottom line. We need healthy doses of skepticism if we're to make our way successfully through this minefield.

    Tips for readers of published memoirs, for starters: Read the fine print. Read the authors' notes that are often (but not always) posted in the front or back matter of a book. There, an author will usually explain his or her method or background for writing the book. You'll see phrases like "to the best of my recollection," or "I've disguised some identities to protect privacy" or "the essence of this is true, but any errors of facts are my own."

    Read those notes carefully, and use your own judgment. 

    Enjoy the stories, but tread carefully.

    Let's hope there aren't many more incidents like the ones mentioned above. And let's hope that authors, to a person, call a spade a spade and tell us when they've invented, fudged, stretched, or misconstrued something.

    Or, to put it another way, let fiction be fiction and memoir, memoir.  

    Agree? Disagree? Want to present another angle? Let us know!