charlabob
JoB, I completely agree with you about unity — I was having a bit of overcaffeinated fun (but you knew that :-)). The Merry Minuet *is* my all time favorite “folksong not written by Tom Lehrer,” and I use any excuse to propagate it.
I haven’t read Kabul Beauty School, but it, along with “Teaching Lolita in Tehran” — which was one of my favorite memoirs of all time, are both suspected of being less-than-faithful to the truth. Don’t know the details about the Beauty School, but here’s the NYT link about Lolita:
What’s funny, to me, is that I’m not sure the truth of a “memoir” matters if the underlying philosophy creates thought and discussion.
OTOH, I was hideously offended by the suburban Jewish woman (living in Portland) who pretended to be a white kid raised in a black foster home in the South Central LA ghetto. She wrote a highly praised before it was debunked memoir about her life. I was especially upset because I bought the book two days before it was debunked, and couldn’t return it. :-)