Creative Embellishment Or Plain Old Lying?

The literary phenomenon known as “creative nonfiction” has caught on in recent years, especially among authors who are belatedly discovered to have made up parts of what were supposed to be factual books. As memoirs and other works of supposed non-fiction have risen to become the most profitable corner of the publishing industry, the line of acceptability in “sprucing up” dull old reality has been blurred. The problem may be that, unlike magazines and newspapers, publishers don’t spend a lot of time on fact-checking, and basically take an author’s word on the events related in a given manuscript.