Well, well, well. It seems that the toast of the Oprah Book Club, A Million Little Pieces, is all lies and/or exaggerations. Supposedly a true story, told by James Frey, enfant terrible of the New York Times best seller list, AMLP was the "memoir" of his substance abuse and related criminality, trip to rehab and ultimate victory over said substances and related criminality.
The noted internet muck-raking site, thesmokinggun.com, has just burst Frey's bubble, in a big way. See http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0104061jamesfrey1.html
In AMLP, Frey portrays himself as the coolest, toughest guy ever to go to rehab. His presence there is a result of the heroic consumption of all sorts of intoxicants, including booze, snow, crack, glue and meth, which cause him to destroy his health and to engage in several criminal mishaps, in particular brawling with most of the police force of the small Ohio town where he attended college, while insanely high on crack. This incident allegedly caused him to spend 3 months in the county jail post-treatment, and only after some powerful friends he made while in rehab interceded on his behalf to reduce the sentence. The book mostly deals with his adventures while in rehab.
According to the diligent research of The Smoking Gun, however, the brawl never happened. In reality, wealthy fratboy Frey was picked up for being drunk in his car while illegally parked, and released a couple of hours later. He was polite and well-dressed throughout the incident. The fictitious brawl and resulting criminal sanctions, however, play a prominent role in both AMLP and its sequel, My Friend Leonard. The Smoking Gun has also found several other major falsities in the books. One expects many more to surface before too long, because Frey's newly-minted status as bestselling author and celebrity Oprah guest makes him a most inviting target.
For a fuller treatment of Frey's falsehoods and orangutan-fisted writing style, please see James Dolan's harsh reviews at http://www.exile.ru/.
The Quintonian admits to having purchased and read both of Frey's tomes, but swears this was before he was on Oprah. The Quintonian denies ever watching Oprah, unless, like John Turner, we have no option, sir. While the books are enjoyable reads, in the same way that Sports Illustrated or Shaved Beaver are amusing page-turners, we did wonder about the veracity of many scenes and characters. But, hey, we figured that the publishing people and Oprah's lackeys must have checked things out to make sure there was some element of truth therein. After all, we live in the era of Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair and many other literary fabricators. But we suppose Frey's 'tough guy with a heart' persona was too powerful to resist. Chicks dig bad boys, after all. Whatever happens, he's sitting on a big pile of cash now, and so is the publishing company.
Perhaps we are witnessing the birth of a new literary genre, in fact. The work of non-fiction that gets outed as being a fabrication after receiving rave reviews and selling millions of copies. In this same week, it turns out that supposed former truck-stop teenage male prostitute and present memoirist J.T. LeRoy is in reality a 40-year old middle class woman. Apparently, her sister-in-law has appeared as the person of J.T. in public appearances, wearing a wig and explaining her feminine look as being a result of going through a process of transgenderation (is that a word?- ed.). Ah, it has been a good week for fraudulence about crapulence.
Can't write novel? Write a memoir? Life not interesting enough as is to sell as a memoir? Make shit up. Half novel, half memoir. Calling your crap fiction a memoir will sell it to those who like memoirs. When you get busted, you sell some more. Among the genius marketers of the popular culture, I'm sure there is a genre called the fake memoir.
Posted by: NorthCoaster | January 11, 2006 at 10:09 AM