Ghost Story

Earlier this fall, on a quiet Saturday night in Britain, wedged on BBC 2 after the 7:30 p.m. broadcast of the BBC orchestra and chorus, and just before a 9:40 p.m. rerun of the 1970s sitcom “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?” was a one-hour documentary that proposed the following: Alex Haley, author of “Roots,” one of the biggest bestsellers of the century, winner of almost 300 awards and the most-watched television series ever, was a fraud, plagiarist and phony. At about the same time, across the Atlantic, New York literary agent David Vigliano quietly began sending out a book proposal by Haley’s eldest daughter Lydia asserting, among other things, that her father cheated on his wife and abandoned his family. The timing could not have been much worse for Haley’s American publisher, Doubleday, which recently featured the book as a centerpiece in its centennial celebration, for it raised again questions that have surrounded Haley since the publication of his masterpiece: When in nonfiction do the ends justify the means? Is it acceptable for a writer to distort, invent and steal if what results somehow expresses a truth deeper than what might have emerged from simply sticking to the literary standards and the facts? Could Alex Haley have been a liar who told the truth?

Even now, 20 years after Haley won the Pulitzer Prize for “Roots,” it is easy to recall the emotional impact the book had. It sold more than 1 million copies during its first six months of publication; grocery stores and pharmacies throughout the United States reported shortages of Kleenex during the series run; male factory workers in England complained that they found it difficult to work with their eyes still stinging from nights spent weeping. It was, for many, the first time slavery was truly humanized, that slaves had names and faces. Even today, Kunta Kinte, Haley’s African ancestor, is perhaps the most commonly known slave in American history.

That Haley was able to trace his family through the generations was nothing short of a miracle. American masters generally changed the African names of slaves, and documentation was meager. In the final 40 pages of “Roots,” Haley explains how he supplemented his “family’s carefully preserved oral history with intensive research in 50-odd libraries.” But when reviewing Haley’s search, experts found that there were only three relevant documents in all of the libraries Haley quotes as being essential. “Haley got everything wrong in his pre-Civil War lineage and none of his plantation ancestors existed; 182 pages have no basis in fact,” says Professor Gary Mills of the University of Alabama. For example, Haley reports that his ancestors were transported aboard the the Lord Ligonier in 1762 when, in fact, the Lord Ligonier did not arrive in Virginia until 1767.

It was not just sloppy research. Almost immediately upon publication of “Roots,” Haley was hit with two copyright infringement suits. One was thrown out, and the other, brought by novelist and scholar Harold Courlander, claimed that “Roots” not only borrowed a large chunk of its story from his novel “The African” but also stole virtually word for word 80 passages from his book. Judge Robert Ward, who presided over the case, concluded that Haley had “perpetrated a hoax on the American public,” and Haley settled by paying Courlander $650,000. Journalist Philip Nobile, who has researched and written about Haley, goes even further, stating bluntly that “most of the book is plagiarized.” The BBC documentary prominently discredits one of the book’s highlights: Haley’s encounter between himself and an old man in the African village of Juffure, where Haley had determined his ancestors came from. In “Roots,” the old man tells Haley of his ancestor Kunta Kinte, bringing Haley’s quest, and his narrative, full circle. “A sob hit me somewhere around my ankles,” Haley wrote. “It came surging upwards and I just bawled as I hadn’t since I was a baby.” But the filmmakers tracked down tapes made by Haley during that meeting and kept for 30 years in the Haley Archives in Tennessee. “The villagers are threatened by members of Haley’s party. These turn out to be senior government officials desperate to ensure that things go smoothly,” recalls documentary producer James Kent. “He specifically asks for a story that will fit his predetermined American narrative.” For Haley critics like Nobile, the tapes are damning. “It shows that he totally fabricated the existence of Kunta Kinte.”

Of course, “Roots” is not the only book to label itself as nonfiction and then be drawn into question. Several years ago, the University of New Mexico found itself with a surprise bestseller, the autobiography of a Native American titled “The Education of Little Tree.” It was later revealed that the author was not Native American and that the entire story was fabricated. Even the nonfiction sensation of the last three years, John Berendt’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” has come under attack for taking liberties with the truth. So Haley is not alone. Yet why did he find it necessary to filch from other works, to force history to fit his preconceived narrative?

Before “Roots,” Haley was perhaps best known for his co-authorship of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” In that book, Malcolm (via Haley) revised and distorted his childhood and youth, his own roots, so to speak. Some of these distortions would have been difficult to fact-check, but others would have been relatively easy to confirm. That Haley did not challenge Malcolm is understandable: Malcolm was not a man easily challenged, and besides, whose story was it anyway? If Malcolm wanted to claim that his father had been murdered by whites for political reasons, who was Haley to argue, even if almost all of the evidence pointed toward an accidental death? If Malcolm said his mother bravely confronted gun-bearing Ku Klux Klan members who attacked their home, and it worked well as a story, so be it, even if Malcolm’s mother and her sister-in-law both denied the incident ever took place. It was a lesson Haley may have learned all too well when it came time to write “Roots:” It didn’t matter whether something was accurate in its details, as long as it was somehow true in its organic whole. Small lies could lead to a greater understanding--as well as a more compelling story.

Haley, in fact, began his career as a mimic and copier--his first “job” as a writer was as mess boy in the Coast Guard, where he ghostwrote love letters for his less literate crew mates. Love letters are perhaps the most utilitarian of correspondence: They usually have a noble aim, frequently ornamented with fibs, half-truths, stolen passages and exaggerations. Haley had for so long--in his Playboy interviews, in his work with Malcolm, in the love letters he wrote as a teenager--helped others express accurately their hearts, if not the facts. Perhaps when it came time to express himself, his own story and the story of his family, he thought the same shortcuts, the same dissembling and the same tricks were necessary because that was the only way he had ever told a story, whether it was to his readers or to his wife.

Throughout his post-”Roots” career, Haley dismissed allegations against the book as racist. Yet as more evidence of his deception has emerged over the last two decades, even his defenders qualify their praise. “Whether the book is fiction or nonfiction is not a concern to the greater world,” says Doubleday director of public relations Stuart Applebaum. “Its impact is emotional.” Some have suggested that the book be recategorized as fiction, but thus far the Haley estate and Doubleday have refused. Of course, memoir, a hot genre in publishing for the last two years, has always walked a blurry line between what is verifiably true and what is simply a matter of subjective experience. Haley was far from the first or last historian to steal from others and manipulate facts to fit a preordained conception, nor was he the first writer whose infidelity to truth was mirrored in his work and family life. Yet how haunting that through lies and larceny, Haley somehow reached a truth deeper than perhaps strict adherence to the historical record might have allowed. That truth, deceptively simple, was that men and women who were slaves were men, women and children. That Haley could express this deep truth is to his credit; that he had to cheat to achieve it is to his shame, making “Roots” tragic in that its story never happened and yet it most certainly did, albeit with a million different names and faces.

It is impossible to exonerate Haley for stealing and distorting, but it is also understandable how, confronting as author and subject the horrors of slavery and yearning to place himself in this world, Alex Haley eventually deluded even Alex Haley. “Roots” became his desperate love letter to himself, his martyred people and the phantoms of his past.