Memoirs & Novels

There's an interesting piece on the James Frey/A Million Little Pieces controversy to be found here.  (Via AndrewSullivan.com)  Author Christian Bauman focuses on his own experiences in publishing, in contrast with Frey's and Anthony Swofford's, and goes into the concept of memoirs vs. novels drawing from personal experience. 

That said -- I don't quite know if Bauman's take on Swofford's Jarhead is all that exact; he points out that "[b]oth of these authors have experienced difficulties of late", and goes on to say that

[t]here have been grumblings from family members of some who populate the pages of Jarhead about misrepresentation. In addition, The New York Times reports that the screenwriter who turned Mr. Swofford's memoir into a movie may have lifted scenes from Joel Turnipseed's book Baghdad Express.

The former doesn't seem to be particularly glaring; the latter, though, strikes me as a particularly strange point to make, as, well, Anthony Swofford didn't adapt his own book, and thus it's not really his "difficulty"...