I’m sick and tired of this horseshit story J.K. Rowling tells. I don’t mean the story of Harry Potter, though I’m pretty sick of that, too. Rather, the thing that has my blood boiling is the rags-to-riches story she tells—and her admirers repeat—about the circumstances surrounding the writing of her first Harry Potter tome.

You’ve doubtless heard the anecdote in one interview or cover story or another. She was a single mother struggling so hard to make ends meet that she was on public assistance, and it was only the runaway success of her book that pulled her out of a life of indigence. Except for the fact that it happened in England, it’s the up-by-your-bootstraps American dream, right?

Not exactly. The essentials of the story are basically accurate, but they’re presented in a false light, and that’s what makes this so deliberately devious. Rowling was on the dole, and the success of her novel did catapult her into massive wealth. But it’s not quite so straightforward as that. See, she had a paying job as a teacher, but she decided that wasn’t what she wanted to do; she wanted to be a writer. So she quit her job and went on public assistance for the express purpose of having the free time to write a novel of wizards and boarding school and maybe pederasty depending on how you read it.

And that’s all fine with me! It was a good way for her to get her book written, and write it she did. But she wasn’t a desperate woman with nowhere else to turn and just a glimmer of hope that her crazy book would keep her from turning tricks and shooting junk right into her eyeballs. She was in control of her life the whole time; downgrading from employment to welfare was a conscious, deliberate choice. Yet the story continues to be told time and again in the more heartwarming, more bullshitty way. The nicest way to describe that would be “disingenuous”; I prefer the spade-a-spade term of “a damned lie.”

And it’s all so unnecessary! The woman wrote a book that became an unprecedented bestseller and launched the greatest multimedia phenomenon since Star Wars. That’s pretty goddamned impressive all on its own. Why taint that with dishonesty for the sake of a folksy anecdote?

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Book Recommendation: My Custom Van
• Is Dumbledore Gay?
• I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
• A Sad State of Affairs
• Make Mine Music