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WHEN NONFICTION BECOMES FICTION
At the time my article appeared, Morgan was quietly going about a lecture circuit of sorts, working through the closely knit New-Age metaphysical circles that seemed to exist throughout the country. Expecting a gathering of about 30 people in Houston, Morgan's amateur promoters were astonished when the publication of my article resulted in high enough presales to predict a crowd of 300. They quickly arranged for a larger space in the hotel where the lecture was scheduled to take place. Arriving fifteen or twenty minutes prior to commencement of the event, I searched out Morgan, an attractive, slightly pudgy woman, appearing to be in her late forties, early fifties. I offered my hand and introduced myself. She greeted me with a polite nod and minimal handshake. Without comment, she inscribed my copy of Mutant (her self-published version, with a buff-yellow cardstock cover) with the words "Love Marlo & The Tribe." Admittedly, I was miffed. I had increased her audience by tenfold, and she appeared to care less.
She gave a talk of acceptable length (less than an hour, if I recall correctly) and told of further adventures she had suffered since the events she reported in Mutant Message. She informed her audience that she had regular mind talk with the chief of the Real People, and the chief had told her that the Real People were going to commit a sort of self-inflicted genocide through celibacy because the world had become so inhospitable. After the talk, Morgan led the audience in a couple of simple exercises in self-knowledge (somewhat similar to party games) and then held a question-and-answer session.
At first, knowing that Morgan had falsified her educational credentials, I wondered at her reason for doing so; I still believed the essential truth of her story. But now, with the accumulated experience and wisdom of an additional eleven years and having worn thin my naive assumption of the scrupulous honesty of everyone who claims its virtue, I have read the account with fresh eyes. Discrepancies now seem to appear everywhere.
In the second paragraph of my article, I relate an incident reported in her book, where she emerges from the Australian bush, dirty and hungry, and asks a passerby for a quarter to make a telephone call. Now that I have been in Australia for nearly five years, I can authoritatively state that asking an Australian for a quarter will be met with a blank stare. Australian coins come in denominations of 5 cents, 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, one dollar, and two dollars. There has never been a 25-cent coin, no quarter of a dollar. On this reading, armed with hindsight and a suspicious mind, it seemed odd that she would submit expensive clothing, a handbag with all her identification, and diamond jewelry to a fire in preparation for a walk that she says she expected to last a couple of hours or less. And why would a tribe who has no secrets have a person with the function of Secret Keeper?
I began to recall my several calls to her home to conduct the interview (which had been arranged by her Houston promoters). I would call at the appointed time and no one would answer. She broke at least three appointments. The magazine was concerned enough to ask me to write something based on a viewing of a videotape of an earlier lecture and the information reported in her book and in a promotional biography. They had been assured by Morgan's promoters that she would call me, and the interview would take place—but we weren't certain if it would happen before we went to press. It didn't. It didn't happen at all. I can only guess at the reasons for the failed interview, since no explanation was ever forthcoming. I wondered if her coolness towards me had been an attempt to forego possible questions. At some point in her travels, certainly once the New Age Journal article was in circulation, some journalist would ask the hard questions that I had not asked.
Mutant Message Downunder, though a bit clumsy in its craftsmanship, is a charming story replete with spiritual insight. It's one of those stories that, as Winston Churchill said of the legend of King Arthur, if it is not true, it ought to be. Amidst snowballing enthusiasm for the story she recounted in her book, the controversy about Morgan's unverified credentials never really materialized, and objections about her obviously invented Aboriginal lifestyle were not widely enough circulated to come to my attention. (Granted, at that time in my life, my plate was very full and I missed the news most days.)
It reminds me of another case of misrepresented memoir. Lynn Andrews, who amassed a fortune and a following with her memoir Medicine Woman, was exposed by Native American descendant (and Andrews's former live-in honey) David Carson. In a lawsuit, Carson claimed that he and Andrews had concocted the story she claimed as her personal experience in Medicine Woman, basing it on his incomplete knowledge of Choctaw culture. Thereafter, her publisher sold her books as fiction. Andrews continues to grind out books in her "Medicine Woman series" and continues to garner a growing international following. I've read both Andrews's and Morgan's first books, and I enjoyed them both. I found Morgan's more believable at first blink (being in a state of total ignorance about Aboriginal culture) and a more effective teaching story.
Morgan and Andrews were neither the first nor the last to attempt these sorts of literary chicanery. In Australia we have Norma Khouri accused of passing off a fictional account of an honor killing in Jordan as her true personal experience. Khouri claims she is guilty only of not informing her readers that she had changed names, dates, and locations to protect the lives of people described in her story.
I am decidedly conflicted about people using deceptive means to deliver spiritual and socially important messages, particularly when they get rich in the process. (In Khouri's case, she announced that the publishers pay her profits directly to an international nonprofit humanitarian organization.) For millions, the spiritual messages written by Morgan and Andrews have inspired positive life changes. Jordanian activists bent on exposing and ending forever the ancient practice of honor killings initially welcomed Khouri's tale, but are now disappointed and worry that the accusations of fraud will hurt their cause. Does the end justify the means? Cannot the truth stand alone?
Perhaps people would rather believe that there is some sort of conspiracy to suppress the truth than to believe that their favorite stories are untrue. With a tolerant smile, one might conclude that the question that needs to be asked is that asked by Robert Duval's character in the film Second Hand Lions: "Does something have to be true for you to believe in it?"
In Morgan's case, what appears to be harmless benefit from mass gullibility has another facet not immediately obvious to those unfamiliar with Australian Aboriginal culture. In Australia, the reaction has run the gamut from incredulous laughter to a blow-by-blow debunking of a multitude of obvious errors. Apparently, later editions of Morgan's book contained a half-hearted disclaimer that declared the book was a novel; and in a vein similar to Khouri, she claimed she had just changed a few facts to protect the Real People. In an alledged telephone confrontation with Aboriginal elders, Morgan was said to have admitted to the fiction and agreed to a written apology, which was never forthcoming.
A sad fact of the American legal system is that Morgan probably could not admit the extent of her deception even if she wanted to. As the American judicial system currently functions, admission of wrongdoing is too frequently not rewarded, but rather opens the door to a multitude of prosecutions and persecutions via opportunitistic lawsuits. Just as the judicial system does not reward coming clean, neither does the penal system. In a system that requires admission of wrongdoing and a show of remorse before a prisoner can hope for parole, innocent people are perversely punished if they refuse to manufacture untrue statements of wrongdoing, no matter how many years they have served nor how exemplary their conduct. Perhaps the system is as good as it can be to accommodate the largest number of people. But in this scenario, people such as Morgan cannot make a clean breast of it without facing punitive circumstances that exceed the crime.
Is there an answer to the dilemma? Why have we developed a system that openly rewards those who make their livings by being crafty in crawling in and out of the loopholes and, openly and without apology, punishes those who either do not understand the system or who refuse to perjure themselves to accommodate it? Going back is never an option. These systems are the end result of reforms to even more abusive systems that existed in the past. The answer must be a reform at the individual level, in the hearts and minds of individual human beings, so that "the spirit of the law" and the "letter of the law" do not operate as two disparate entities. We seem to be in need of a unifying string theory in our legal systems.
Two links to other websites with information about Morgan's fraud have been removed because they no longer work.