Misery lit
Encyclopedia
The Bookseller
The Bookseller is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. Neill Denny is editor-in-chief of the weekly print edition of the magazine, while Philip Jones is deputy editor, having recently been promoted from the position of managing editor of the Bookseller.com...
magazine that describes a genre of biographical literature mostly concerned with the protagonist's triumph over personal trauma or abuse, often during childhood. Because of the recovery dimension of the genre, some British publishers refer to it as "inspirational lit
Inspirational fiction
Inspirational fiction is a term that refers to a sub-category within "inspirational literature," or "inspirational writing," used in various ways in the United States and other nations...
", but that term is more commonly (although not completely) used outside the UK to describe Christian literature, where faith helps the main character overcome obstacles, or in the non-religious version of "inspirational fiction," characters uses values, inner strength, or life lessons to "pull themselves up by their own bootstrings." The genre is generally considered to be American in origin, but eventually became popular in Britain as well.
The genre
Works in the genre typically—though not exclusively—begin in the subject's childhood, and very often involve suffering some wrong, physical or sexual abuse, or neglect, perpetrated by an adult authority figure, often a parent. These tales usually culminate in some sort of emotional catharsisCatharsis
Catharsis or katharsis is a Greek word meaning "cleansing" or "purging". It is derived from the verb καθαίρειν, kathairein, "to purify, purge," and it is related to the adjective καθαρός, katharos, "pure or clean."-Dramatic uses:...
, redemption or escape from the abuse or situation. They are often written in the first person.
Most critics trace the beginning of the genre to A Child Called "It", a 1995 memoir by American Dave Pelzer
Dave Pelzer
David James Pelzer is an American author, best known for his 1995 memoir of childhood abuse, A Child Called "It"....
, in which he details the outrageous abuse he claims to have suffered at the hands of his alcoholic mother, and two subsequent books which continue the story. Pelzer's three books—all recovery narratives dealing with his childhood—created considerable controversy, including doubt as to the veracity of the claims. While the books spent a combined total of 448 weeks on the New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list, Pelzer acknowledges purchasing and reselling many thousands of his own books.
Jung Chang
Jung Chang
Jung Chang is a Chinese-born British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in the People's Republic of China....
's Wild Swans
Wild Swans
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China is a family history that spans a century, recounting the lives of three female generations in China, by Chinese writer Jung Chang. First published in 1991, Wild Swans contains the biographies of her grandmother and her mother, then finally her own autobiography...
(1992) and Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt
Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood....
's Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes
Angela's Ashes is a 1996 memoir by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt. The memoir consists of various anecdotes and stories of Frank McCourt's impoverished childhood and early adulthood in Brooklyn, New York and Limerick, Ireland, as well as McCourt's struggles with poverty, his father's...
(1996) are also seen as seminal works establishing the genre.
Popularity
Misery lit has been described as "the book world's biggest boom sector". Works in the genre comprised 11 of the top 100 bestselling English paperbacks of 2006, selling nearly two million copies between them. The Waterstone’s chain of British book retailers even instituted a discrete "Painful Lives" section; BordersBorders Group
Borders Group, Inc. was an international book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company employed approximately 19,500 throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders and Waldenbooks stores....
followed suit with "Real Lives".
At the W H Smith
W H Smith
WHSmith plc is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. It is best known for its chain of high street, railway station, airport, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, and entertainment products...
chain, the section is entitled "Tragic Life Stories"; in each case side-stepping the dilemma of whether to categorize the books under Fiction or Non-fiction.
The readership for these books is estimated to be "80% or 90% female". Roughly 80% of the sales of misery lit books are made not in conventional bookstores but in mass-market outlets such as Asda
Asda
Asda Stores Ltd is a British supermarket chain which retails food, clothing, general merchandise, toys and financial services. It also has a mobile telephone network, , Asda Mobile...
and Tesco
Tesco
Tesco plc is a global grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Cheshunt, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues and the second-largest measured by profits...
.
Criticism
Some of the genre's authors have said they write in order to come to terms with their traumatic memories, and to help readers do the same. Supporters of the genre also claim the genre's popularity indicates a growing cultural willingness to directly confront topics—specifically child sexual abuse—that once would have been ignored or swept under the rug.However, a common criticism of the genre is the suggestion that its appeal lies in prurience and voyeurism. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
writer Carol Sarler suggests the popularity of the genre indicates a culture "utterly in thrall to pedophilia
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
". Other critics locate the genre's popular appeal in its combination of moral outrage and titillation.
Literary hoaxes
"Misery lit" has been proven to be a popular genre for literary hoaxes in which authors claim to reveal painful stories from their past.One early such hoax was the 1836 book Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed, by Maria Monk
Maria Monk
Maria Monk was a Canadian woman who claimed to have been a nun who had been sexually exploited in her convent...
, which claimed to tell of Monk's abuse in a convent
Convent
A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion...
. The book was a fabrication, and, though it contained a variety of factual errors, it became a widely-read bestseller for several decades as it capitalized on anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
has been the subject of several notable literary hoaxes by authors who either falsely claim to have lived through it, or were in fact Holocaust survivors but falsified their experiences. Such hoaxes include The Painted Bird (1965) by Jerzy Kosinski
Jerzy Kosinski
Jerzy Kosiński , born Józef Lewinkopf, was an award-winning Polish American novelist, and two-time President of the American Chapter of P.E.N.He was known for various novels, among them The Painted Bird and Being There...
, Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood (1995) by Binjamin Wilkomirski
Binjamin Wilkomirski
Binjamin Wilkomirski was a name which Bruno Dössekker adopted in his constructed identity as a Holocaust survivor and published author...
, Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years
Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years
Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years is a book by Misha Defonseca, first published in 1997. The book was originally claimed to be a memoir telling the true story of how the author survived The Holocaust as a young Jewish girl, wandering Europe searching for her deported parents...
(1997) by Misha Defonseca and Angel at the Fence
Angel at the Fence
Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived, written by Herman Rosenblat, was claimed by its author to be a Holocaust memoir telling the story of his reunion with and marriage to a girl who had passed him food through the fence while he was imprisoned at Schlieben, part of the...
by Herman Rosenblat
Herman Rosenblat
Herman A. Rosenblat, born in Poland in 1929, is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who immigrated to the United States in 1950 and later wrote the Holocaust survival memoir Angel at the Fence...
(which was planned to be published in 2009, but publication was cancelled).
Other, more recent memoirs, which tell of childhood miseries as a result of parental abuse, drug use, illness and the like, include Go Ask Alice
Go Ask Alice
Go Ask Alice is a controversial 1971 book about the life of a troubled teenage girl. The book continues its claim to be the actual diary of an anonymous teenage girl who became addicted to drugs, but this has been dismissed as false. Beatrice Sparks is listed as the author of the book by the United...
(1971) by Beatrice Sparks
Beatrice Sparks
Beatrice Sparks is an American therapist and Mormon youth counselor who is known for producing books purporting to be the 'real diaries' of troubled teenagers. The books deal with topical issues such as drug abuse, Satanism, teenage pregnancy or AIDS, and are presented as cautionary tales...
, A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story (1993) by "Anthony Godby Johnson
Anthony Godby Johnson
Anthony Godby Johnson is the subject and supposed author of the 1993 memoir A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story. Subsequent investigations suggest that there may have never been a person by this name, and that his entire story was a fabrication on the part of Vicki Johnson, the...
", The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (novel)
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things is a 2001 novel by Laura Albert, using the pen name and fictional persona of JT LeRoy. It is a catalogue of drug abuse, child sexual abuse, physical abuse centred around Jeremiah, a young boy, and his prostitute mother Sarah...
(2001) by "JT LeRoy
JT LeRoy
Jeremiah "Terminator" LeRoy was a pseudonym created by American writer Laura Albert. The name was used from 1996 on for publication in magazines such as Nerve and Shout NY. After his first novel Sarah was published, "LeRoy" started making public appearances...
", Kathy's Story (2005) by Kathy O'Beirne and Love and Consequences (2008) by Margaret Seltzer
Margaret Seltzer
Margaret Seltzer is an American writer. Her first book, Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival , about her alleged experiences growing up as a half white, half Native American foster child and Bloods gang member in South Central Los Angeles, was proven to be fictitious...
Some memoirs of suffering have included elements of both truth and fiction. These include I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983) by Rigoberta Menchú
Rigoberta Menchú
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is an indigenous Guatemalan, of the K'iche' ethnic group. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the plight of Guatemala's indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War , and to promoting indigenous rights in the country...
(a book that won Menchú the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
in 1992) and A Million Little Pieces
A Million Little Pieces
A Million Little Pieces is a semi-fictional memoir by James Frey. It tells the story of a 23-year-old alcoholic and drug abuser and how he copes with rehabilitation in a Twelve steps-oriented treatment center...
(2003) by James Frey
James Frey
James Christopher Frey is an American writer. His books A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard , as well as Bright Shiny Morning , were bestsellers...
.