Misery Lit
Misery Lit is a derogatory term that is said to have been coined by Bookseller Magazine.
It refers to literature that deals primarily with the protagonist's personal childhood trauma . The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, Or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life (1836) by Maria Monk are considered to be the beginning of the genre . She claimed that as a nun she was forced to have sex with priests. The children were baptized and strangled. In fact, Monk was never a nun but a prostitute and the events described did not take place.
Examples are A child called it by Dave Pelzer , Wild Swans by Jung Chang and The Ashes of My Mother by Frank McCourt . Another example is Don't ever tell by Kathleen O'Beirne .
Some of the most famous books later turned out to be fakes. These include the works of Nasdijj (alias Timothy Patrick Barrus), James Frey , JT LeRoy , Laurel Rose Willson , Binjamin Wilkomirski and Margaret Seltzer . It was not always clear whether the author had deliberately cheated or whether he subjectively believed in the truth of his story.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ O'Neill, Brendan (April 17, 2007). "Misery lit ... read on". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6563529.stm .
- ↑ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3635834/Mis-lit-Is-this-the-end-for-the-misery-memoir.html
- ↑ Jordan, Pat (July 28, 2002). Dysfunction for Dollars . The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/28/magazine/dysfunction-for-dollars.html?pagewanted=2
- ↑ Hegarty, Shane (October 8, 2007). Not Without My Receipt: One Boy's Horrific Story of Surviving A Trip to the Bookshop ( Memento of November 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). The Ireland Times.