How do we rate the chances of Rob Stutzman and Jonathan Wheeler, the two Californians who are suing Penguin and Random House for fraud and false advertising in relation to Lance Armstrong’s memoirs? Newspaper reports state that they feel ‘cheated and betrayed’ after books that they bought as ‘non-fiction’ were revealed by the author to be a pack of lies.

I imagine that the court case will result in some lucrative work for literary theorists, who could be called in to debate whether writing your own life isn’t always a fictional enterprise. Most celebrity memoirs aren’t even written by the person who claims to be the author, so the lies begin on the dust jacket. And even when the celebrity is actually holding the pen, you can scarcely expect an unadorned narrative to come from the horse’s mouth.

On the other hand, there must be a difference between airbrushing the story of your life and fabricating it outright. The genre of autobiography frequently relies on a high ideal of authenticity. If a holocaust memoir turns out to be fictional, there’s a storm of protest. Don’t we need to police the distinction between fiction and non-fiction in this sphere?

On second thoughts, let’s hope they settle out of court…