Liars betray us. That’s the damage - and the liars then become untrustworthy, so the emotional scaffolding upon which we rely (especially as children) is undermined. Lying is no small matter. This was a sad and beautifully written piece.
This is a wise reckoning, the kind of essay I would like to write about writer H.G. Carrillo, who I did not know personally but whose story of denying his family and pretending to be Cuban, even to his partner, I struggled with mightily when I learned of it. I still struggle with it, with the way so many people brushed over it. I feel like there might be a part II to this someday, as more comes out about The Salt Path. Finally, I just pray for your burden with your mother to lift, for you to have the peace and ease you deserve.
This post is a masterclass in layered grief — the kind that builds not just from betrayal or exhaustion, but from the quiet horror of watching reality become negotiable. What begins with a diamond ring and a mother’s bruised cheekbone ripples outward until the personal and political become indistinguishable: lies, manipulation, DARVO tactics, and a public so saturated in falsehood that gaslighting now feels like background noise.
What’s most devastating — and sharp — is how the writer refuses to soften the edges. This isn’t poetic victimhood. It’s lived clarity. The kind of clarity that costs something. The kind that shatters nostalgia and asks: What do we do when the people we love shape-shift truth? What do we do when culture rewards the same?
It’s not about purity. It’s about consequences.
Lying may be human, but sustained falsehood — personal or political — corrodes our capacity to recognize reality. And that erosion, not the original lie, is the real danger. What makes this piece powerful isn’t just its indictment of deceit — it’s the haunting echo of a daughter, a citizen, a witness saying: I still see what’s real. Even when you try to make me doubt it.
wow! this was a big one! way too much to think about in this heat! but if you can write it, I will give it all the time it deserves....and, btw, i knew the dog hadnt actually eaten your homework!
Thank you for this, and for weaving in the Raynor Winn/Sally Walker latest. I was the child of a story maker, just this side of liar. My mother would create versions of things that bore so much of the truth they were nearly irrefutable. The line between truth and embellishment was as thing as well, lipstick. The damage of it was that of a lie. Lies leaves us doubting that anything is truth, especially love. Memoirists...we rely on truth as our fuel. Raynor Winn's creations are devastating to the genre, and I'm taking it quite personally.
Re Raynor Winn and her true story novel. I stand with her, not the fraud and embezzlement obviously but the idea of a memoirist choosing what to recount in detail, what to gloss over and what to leave out. That’s the craft of her writing. As a beginner in the genre I perfectly understand how you have to choose events and circumstances carefully to fit your themes. One of my personal essays is about a Polish bakery that might not have been Polish at all. We called it that in our family, enjoyed the babkas, challah and baked cheesecake but our English neighbours might well recall the scones and Bakewell tarts they bought there. Winn’s novel is about living on the margins and the pilgrimage she makes to find a new perspective on life. That stands up. I don’t think the derelict house in France and alleged embezzlement changes anything. I hope she will repay her debts now though and it’s a pity her publisher made such a meal of the true story label. I read the book some time ago and gave it to my little street library, I’m surprised it’s been made into a film. I like to travel a bit further, from my armchair; I’m reading L'Africain du Groenland atm. It’s a greatand I don’t care how much Tété- Michel has embellished it or left things out.
This was one damn beautiful essai...the mix of bio and cultural, thank you.
As to the origins of the Lie...
We live in a world where billions of our fellow humans deeply believe in con-artists who have been dead for 1000s of years ~ for that is how I feel about ALL the major mythologies that true believers swear to gawd represent the Real Words of {put your name for your favorite transcendent boogieman in the sky god here _______ }.
So, back to those origins. Since myths of virgin births, and incredible cave encounters with chatty angels in the desert, are believed to the point where men (and a few women) will to this day kill you on behalf of their divine of choice, I think these cuckoo myths allow the rest of us to make up our own, ones that are preferably more plausible to the educated eye. Here's mine....
Syntactical Symbolism is what truly distinguishes our speech from that of all other animals. Where, when and the whys that brought this about, is the ultimate mystery of our species. We are the chatty ones, who recall the long agos, and the guess what happened to me today tales. Dig through dozens of books on the anthropogeny and the origins of our species, and you'll come up with a ton of ... vagaries as to the origins of our magical use of sounds and symbols that become sentences and tell tales, both tall and short, and eventually allows us to turn this magic into pure symbolic logic, and thus we build mathematical models that become the laws of physics, quantum mechanics and the like.
My Mythological origin tale in an eggshell:
Sometime in the past 300,000 years, amongst a clan of primates who had no idea they were about to become homo sapiens sapiens, a Momma/Granny/Auntie/Sister, perhaps all of the above, was cooing at children as the dusk of another day settled over them, and as she sang and sighed the sounds of sleepy love their way, for one reason or another some of the babes about were stressed and frightened, and so She decided to do something with her Sounds, her Words, the noises that all her fellow primates about recognized (in the same way that squirrels know a hawk is nearby when a sparrow calls out in its own tongue "HAWK!") ~ she took the world as described with the word-sounds they all used, and made them do things that had never been seen here on Earth!
She told the First Fairytale, Bedtime Story, perhaps too, as a Lullaby ~ of when the child ...say.... used to fly over the mountains to the west, with its long skyblue wings, in the years before she/he became Momma's beautiful baby! To wit: Our language, and its infinite syntactical dances and symphonic fugues, was born amongst the Mommas and the children, so to comfort the wee ones, and keep love and laughter and joy alive, especially when their sleep was hindered by the realities of life on Earth.
That's my myth, and I'm sticking it to it. It was the Mommas who discovered how to do The Trick (that you can hear in the sound of every word I'm typing here), and the motive behind The Trick was always the intentional make-believe, told with a knowing nod and a wink, and the giggling and hugging that brings not just joy, but exhaustion and thus calm, to a child ~ so they can fall asleep.
(And a brief aside ~ what a joyful silliness we adults do experience, when engaging with a child we manage to say such things that set them off into incredible gigglefests, that result in their saying, "O no! you better stop, you're gonna make me pee!" That's laughter letting go on all levels!)
And once learned - The Trick can never be forgotten.
Uh-huh. Prove it, buddy.
As noted, this is my myth, I don't need proof, for just as it's presented here, it seems alot more plausible than the various tales told about how the birth-home of the Virgin Mary got up flew around the Eastern Mediterranean before finally landing in Loreto, Italy (it's a holy shrine). But for arguments sake, here are the only two points of evidence that are enough for me to serve as satisfactory proof that this mythology is the Truth about how we obtained The Trick.
1) When do most humans learn how to do The Trick, speak in languages and tongues, that they can hear and very soon understand and start creating their own complicated and magical sentences? Between the ages of 0 and 5 to 7, or so. And as far as we know, who are children mostly around at that time? You got it, mostly dames.
2) Around 5-6,000 years ago, something called patriarchy was born, and with it came cities, and slavery, and armies, and slaughter, and rape, amongst other delights ~ and all of it ruled by hierarchical males who found their glory when they hit the nastiest stages of adolescence, and claimed this was the True Maturity of A MAN...and to prove it, they invented a god (or gods) who acted just like them! But the boys who started it all, did grow up in clans, and although they may have forgotten the messages of love and kindness and caring for one another, they hadn't forgotten the tales of where The Trick came from...and so they turned its origins into a curse, that their Gawd aimed at someone named Eve, or Pandora, or take your pick from the multitude of myths that are scattered about "civilized" Mother Earth.
The End ~ praise the Ladies, and thanks be to Lullabies.
This is not to excuse or defend Winn or anyone who would act in a similar way, just thoughts I’ve been churning for the last 24 hours.
I’ve always believed (and been proven at times) that some biographies and autobiographies must be taken with a grain of salt— timelines change, stories are embellished or otherwise changed, things are omitted, memories shift, the subject and author are human. I guess I never chalked those things up to avarice or deliberate intent to deceive. Why then, did the news around Salt Path hit so hard? Why do I/we expect more of memoir? Is it just the financial aspect of this? Or the deliberateness? Potential illegalities? I’m more upset that this story of powering through hardship is far less than honest than I would have been knowing the truth from the start. It is not great literature but was an engaging read and pulled me mentally onto the coastal path and later in Landlines into the forest and highlands of Scotland. I purchased the set because I wanted to do a bit to help them. And now feel betrayed. I won’t burn any book but also don’t feel good about donating these or sharing in a Little Free Library unless I add an explanatory note that they should be considered fiction and a link to the Observer article.
Books like the Salt Path sell because if there's one thing grifters can sense, it's the story people want to be told. Happens like clockwork what? every 5-7 years?
And oof Elissa "Because I wanted you to feel bad about yourself."
Liars betray us. That’s the damage - and the liars then become untrustworthy, so the emotional scaffolding upon which we rely (especially as children) is undermined. Lying is no small matter. This was a sad and beautifully written piece.
This is a wise reckoning, the kind of essay I would like to write about writer H.G. Carrillo, who I did not know personally but whose story of denying his family and pretending to be Cuban, even to his partner, I struggled with mightily when I learned of it. I still struggle with it, with the way so many people brushed over it. I feel like there might be a part II to this someday, as more comes out about The Salt Path. Finally, I just pray for your burden with your mother to lift, for you to have the peace and ease you deserve.
This post is a masterclass in layered grief — the kind that builds not just from betrayal or exhaustion, but from the quiet horror of watching reality become negotiable. What begins with a diamond ring and a mother’s bruised cheekbone ripples outward until the personal and political become indistinguishable: lies, manipulation, DARVO tactics, and a public so saturated in falsehood that gaslighting now feels like background noise.
What’s most devastating — and sharp — is how the writer refuses to soften the edges. This isn’t poetic victimhood. It’s lived clarity. The kind of clarity that costs something. The kind that shatters nostalgia and asks: What do we do when the people we love shape-shift truth? What do we do when culture rewards the same?
It’s not about purity. It’s about consequences.
Lying may be human, but sustained falsehood — personal or political — corrodes our capacity to recognize reality. And that erosion, not the original lie, is the real danger. What makes this piece powerful isn’t just its indictment of deceit — it’s the haunting echo of a daughter, a citizen, a witness saying: I still see what’s real. Even when you try to make me doubt it.
Thank you for writing these stunning words.
And then there's the liar who comes to believe his or her lies, truly believe them. Another wrinkle. Thanks for this, Elissa--very provocative.
Exactly—very complicated.
wow! this was a big one! way too much to think about in this heat! but if you can write it, I will give it all the time it deserves....and, btw, i knew the dog hadnt actually eaten your homework!
OK the dog didn't eat my homework but I really was sick that day. :-)
Thank you for this, and for weaving in the Raynor Winn/Sally Walker latest. I was the child of a story maker, just this side of liar. My mother would create versions of things that bore so much of the truth they were nearly irrefutable. The line between truth and embellishment was as thing as well, lipstick. The damage of it was that of a lie. Lies leaves us doubting that anything is truth, especially love. Memoirists...we rely on truth as our fuel. Raynor Winn's creations are devastating to the genre, and I'm taking it quite personally.
Interesting piece thank you.
Re Raynor Winn and her true story novel. I stand with her, not the fraud and embezzlement obviously but the idea of a memoirist choosing what to recount in detail, what to gloss over and what to leave out. That’s the craft of her writing. As a beginner in the genre I perfectly understand how you have to choose events and circumstances carefully to fit your themes. One of my personal essays is about a Polish bakery that might not have been Polish at all. We called it that in our family, enjoyed the babkas, challah and baked cheesecake but our English neighbours might well recall the scones and Bakewell tarts they bought there. Winn’s novel is about living on the margins and the pilgrimage she makes to find a new perspective on life. That stands up. I don’t think the derelict house in France and alleged embezzlement changes anything. I hope she will repay her debts now though and it’s a pity her publisher made such a meal of the true story label. I read the book some time ago and gave it to my little street library, I’m surprised it’s been made into a film. I like to travel a bit further, from my armchair; I’m reading L'Africain du Groenland atm. It’s a greatand I don’t care how much Tété- Michel has embellished it or left things out.
Absolutely agree. Memoirs are not tell-alls nor are they kitchen sinks.
This was one damn beautiful essai...the mix of bio and cultural, thank you.
As to the origins of the Lie...
We live in a world where billions of our fellow humans deeply believe in con-artists who have been dead for 1000s of years ~ for that is how I feel about ALL the major mythologies that true believers swear to gawd represent the Real Words of {put your name for your favorite transcendent boogieman in the sky god here _______ }.
So, back to those origins. Since myths of virgin births, and incredible cave encounters with chatty angels in the desert, are believed to the point where men (and a few women) will to this day kill you on behalf of their divine of choice, I think these cuckoo myths allow the rest of us to make up our own, ones that are preferably more plausible to the educated eye. Here's mine....
Syntactical Symbolism is what truly distinguishes our speech from that of all other animals. Where, when and the whys that brought this about, is the ultimate mystery of our species. We are the chatty ones, who recall the long agos, and the guess what happened to me today tales. Dig through dozens of books on the anthropogeny and the origins of our species, and you'll come up with a ton of ... vagaries as to the origins of our magical use of sounds and symbols that become sentences and tell tales, both tall and short, and eventually allows us to turn this magic into pure symbolic logic, and thus we build mathematical models that become the laws of physics, quantum mechanics and the like.
My Mythological origin tale in an eggshell:
Sometime in the past 300,000 years, amongst a clan of primates who had no idea they were about to become homo sapiens sapiens, a Momma/Granny/Auntie/Sister, perhaps all of the above, was cooing at children as the dusk of another day settled over them, and as she sang and sighed the sounds of sleepy love their way, for one reason or another some of the babes about were stressed and frightened, and so She decided to do something with her Sounds, her Words, the noises that all her fellow primates about recognized (in the same way that squirrels know a hawk is nearby when a sparrow calls out in its own tongue "HAWK!") ~ she took the world as described with the word-sounds they all used, and made them do things that had never been seen here on Earth!
She told the First Fairytale, Bedtime Story, perhaps too, as a Lullaby ~ of when the child ...say.... used to fly over the mountains to the west, with its long skyblue wings, in the years before she/he became Momma's beautiful baby! To wit: Our language, and its infinite syntactical dances and symphonic fugues, was born amongst the Mommas and the children, so to comfort the wee ones, and keep love and laughter and joy alive, especially when their sleep was hindered by the realities of life on Earth.
That's my myth, and I'm sticking it to it. It was the Mommas who discovered how to do The Trick (that you can hear in the sound of every word I'm typing here), and the motive behind The Trick was always the intentional make-believe, told with a knowing nod and a wink, and the giggling and hugging that brings not just joy, but exhaustion and thus calm, to a child ~ so they can fall asleep.
(And a brief aside ~ what a joyful silliness we adults do experience, when engaging with a child we manage to say such things that set them off into incredible gigglefests, that result in their saying, "O no! you better stop, you're gonna make me pee!" That's laughter letting go on all levels!)
And once learned - The Trick can never be forgotten.
Uh-huh. Prove it, buddy.
As noted, this is my myth, I don't need proof, for just as it's presented here, it seems alot more plausible than the various tales told about how the birth-home of the Virgin Mary got up flew around the Eastern Mediterranean before finally landing in Loreto, Italy (it's a holy shrine). But for arguments sake, here are the only two points of evidence that are enough for me to serve as satisfactory proof that this mythology is the Truth about how we obtained The Trick.
1) When do most humans learn how to do The Trick, speak in languages and tongues, that they can hear and very soon understand and start creating their own complicated and magical sentences? Between the ages of 0 and 5 to 7, or so. And as far as we know, who are children mostly around at that time? You got it, mostly dames.
2) Around 5-6,000 years ago, something called patriarchy was born, and with it came cities, and slavery, and armies, and slaughter, and rape, amongst other delights ~ and all of it ruled by hierarchical males who found their glory when they hit the nastiest stages of adolescence, and claimed this was the True Maturity of A MAN...and to prove it, they invented a god (or gods) who acted just like them! But the boys who started it all, did grow up in clans, and although they may have forgotten the messages of love and kindness and caring for one another, they hadn't forgotten the tales of where The Trick came from...and so they turned its origins into a curse, that their Gawd aimed at someone named Eve, or Pandora, or take your pick from the multitude of myths that are scattered about "civilized" Mother Earth.
The End ~ praise the Ladies, and thanks be to Lullabies.
Another fascinating read Elissa
This sure gave me a lot to think about. Thank you, Elissa Altman, for distilling so much into a thoughtful and thought-provoking essay.
Oof. This one hits hard. Just listened to your interview on Memoir Nation. Fantastic.
Great piece, Elissa, thanks.
great read!
This is not to excuse or defend Winn or anyone who would act in a similar way, just thoughts I’ve been churning for the last 24 hours.
I’ve always believed (and been proven at times) that some biographies and autobiographies must be taken with a grain of salt— timelines change, stories are embellished or otherwise changed, things are omitted, memories shift, the subject and author are human. I guess I never chalked those things up to avarice or deliberate intent to deceive. Why then, did the news around Salt Path hit so hard? Why do I/we expect more of memoir? Is it just the financial aspect of this? Or the deliberateness? Potential illegalities? I’m more upset that this story of powering through hardship is far less than honest than I would have been knowing the truth from the start. It is not great literature but was an engaging read and pulled me mentally onto the coastal path and later in Landlines into the forest and highlands of Scotland. I purchased the set because I wanted to do a bit to help them. And now feel betrayed. I won’t burn any book but also don’t feel good about donating these or sharing in a Little Free Library unless I add an explanatory note that they should be considered fiction and a link to the Observer article.
Books like the Salt Path sell because if there's one thing grifters can sense, it's the story people want to be told. Happens like clockwork what? every 5-7 years?
And oof Elissa "Because I wanted you to feel bad about yourself."
Seems that way for certain people!