Here's the latest on Angel at the Fence, the partially fabricated Holocaust memoir that detailed the relationship of Herman and Roma Rosenblat.

Although the original publisher withdrew after the fakery was exposed, a small New York publishing house says it is in talks to release the book as fiction, the New York Times reports today. If only Herman had taken that route to begin with, we might all be reading his The Boy in the Striped Pajamas-like tale -- similarly thought-provoking, yet similarly far-fetched. But even if his book is released as fiction, count me among the folks who will not read it -- out of principle.

Meanwhile, on Slate, Lev Raphael asks why Americans are suckers for such bogus memoirs.  He notes that William Dean Howells once said the problem with American audiences was that they always wanted "a tragedy with a happy ending." That need for romance blinded the publisher and others who should have seen the story as too good to be true, Raphael says.