Johnny Rotten

About two and a half years ago, James Frey publushed A Million Little Lies, in which he purported to be a destatable human being, public enemy #1 at one point but now a recovered junkie who wrote this memoir as a cautionary tale. It's sold 3.5 million copies so far, boosted greatly by being put in Oprah's Book Club. No other book sold more copies last year besides Harry Potter.

This Sunday, The Smoking Gun published an exhaustive six-page investigation which concluded that Frey had either greatly embellished or completely fabricated some of the most sensational material in the book. (This is not the first time that accusations have been leveled against Frey, but it is the first time that anyone had proof, in the form of police documents and the accounts of witnesses). In one segment, Frey claims to be high on crack and smashed on alcohol when he hits a police officer with his car, which results in a heated argument and Frey being hauled bodily into a cruiser, with a list of serious felonies soon to be attached to his rap sheet.

A legal battle has ensued between Frey and TSG, but what strikes me is this guy, who is apparently just a middle-of-the-road creep, would risk ruining his life with a pile of outrageous lies. And it also depresses me that it would take two and a half years for anyone to care enough to do some fact checking, despite the book's and the author's wild popularity (easily drawing a thousand people at every public appearance). Is it likely that he's just a compulsive liar with a wild imagination -- because who else would claim to get a root canal without anesthesia, or walk onto a commercial passenger plane with his shirt covered in blood, snot, and other bodily liquids?

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"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine

Strange Famous

yo, TSG really fucked this dude up!

Personally, Ive never read the book, but I would say it is at least possible for what it to contain emotional truth, even if all the events are not literally true. The nature of addiction and pain can be the same, whether or not you really run over a cop or have a tooth pulled with no pain killers... maybe some of it is just intended to be allegories for the things he felt, fantasies that his drug induced state made seem real, his self hatrid demanding some kind of rationale... maybe he just wished his face was covered with the scars to show what he had been though, so he invented some of them.

As for people suing him and stuff, I dont see either the point, or that there is much of a case. Novels are not written under oath, whether to a degree he painted fiction as non-fiction... the story is the same as it was before, it says the same words.

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"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

msh58

my mom is actually reading it now, when she's done it'll get passed to me. Think theres a line between fiction and non fiction but not much room for the inbetweeners. Might need another category i guess. Got that feeling with hunter thompsons stuff. Although with him it seemed like the reality probably was even worse than what he did decide to write. lol.

Locobot

It's funny because TSG probably has an agenda in this expose'. Books though are so hard to market that any controversy will only help sales. There are millions and millions of people who would have never heard of this guy, even from Oprah. Now there's interest and I can garauntee this will only increase sales/readership. Really a scandal is one of the best things that can happen for an author, nothing else will get such widespread coverage.

repeater

I was telling a friend about Fry's controversy and she mentioned that to her it didn't seem any different than what Thompson did. But I think it is a lot different. Hunter's writings were certainly about addiction, but it doesn't seem in the same way. With Hunter you have to realize that not everything he writes actually happens. He was writing while actually on drugs or at least from the perspective of someone that was. So what he sees or hears was part of the drugs.

I haven't read Fry's book but it certainly seems that he was trying to at least present an objective view of what other people would have seen. He also seems to have a lot to say about recovery which I don't think Hunter ever really cared about.

So has anyone actually read the book? I tend to stay away from anything having to do with Oprah

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When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
-Raoul Duke

maleficent

I was reading something about this last night - -and I'm not sure that Frey is 100 percent to blame - he originally tried to sell it as a work of fiction to numerous publishers -- all of which turned him down - he went to his current publisher and either at the urging of the publisher or himself (that part is unclear) it was then turned into a memoir...

if you market something as a memoir and it's a work of fiction -- well that's misleading and is a lie... (even the book Memoirs of geisha said on the cover that it was a work of fiction....)

There was another Oprah book that Oprah had it as a selection - then dropped it as a selection (the connections or the commitments or something like that - i think the author was jonathan franzen - the book sucked - whatever it was) but the publicity helped boost sales...

Publicity will help this books sales - people will read it to see what the hubbub is all about...

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Valentina

Okay, I haven't read The Corrections, but Franzen is an extraordinarily well-respected writer, and there was an almost unanimous consensus among critics that the book was a major literary accomplishment--i.e., most people who know anything about literary fiction agree that the book did not suck.

The problem was that when Oprah picked the book, Franzen worried that people would make assumptions about his book that he didn't necessarily want them to make, and he shared those concerns with members of the press. I'm not sure he ever flat-out refused the offer from Oprah, but he said some things that cast some of Oprah's previous picks as dubious, from a literary standpoint. That was why she withdrew the offer, I think...but I think they may have patched things up in the end; I don't know--but here's an article on the subject from Salon.com:

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2...y/index.html?x

Sgoilear

I've got to disagree here. The words may be the same but the impact of the book is most certainly different once it's know that it was in large part fiction. It becomes less real. People who read an inspirational story about a real event will be more emotionally involved then peple reading a fiction story simply because one really happened to a real person and the other did not.

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"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them." -George Bernard Shaw

pan6467

While I haven't read it some co-workers have and they can tell there are some very fictious parts, however they say he does have the insanity and behaviors of the classic addict in the book. Such as much of his stays in and out of rehabs.

From what I gather it is one of those "I did it on my own because the system is fucked up" type books.

If that is the case then he should add that it is fictional and not fact, as there maybe people who try to kick addiction the way he "did" and not truly seek the help they may need.

Not everyone can kick it on their own and there is no reason for dumbfucks who fictionalize their recoveries to make people feel like failures because they can't kick their addiction on their own.

Therapy, 12 steps and rehabs don't help everyone, but they are needed and it pisses me off when people who haven't truly experienced addiction or losing everything say those programs aren't needed or put the programs down and don't truly know shit about them.

And speaking of Oprah's book selections, as one who had to read Sula for my english class 2 years ago...... the book sucked sewer water. It was one of the most racist, ignorant books I ever read.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

matthew330

"If that is the case then he should add that it is fictional and not fact, as there maybe people who try to kick addiction the way he "did" and not truly seek the help they may need. "

If an addict models his recovery on a book and fails, that person wasn't commited to recovery in the first place. This author wrote a book that was enjoyable to presumably (based on the amount of copies it sold), to those who weren't addicts - so why the concern..

"Therapy, 12 steps and rehabs don't help everyone, but they are needed and it pisses me off when people who haven't truly experienced addiction or losing everything say those programs aren't needed or put the programs down and don't truly know shit about them."

He was an addict. I don't get why people feel let down that his life wasn't quite as devastating as portrayed in this book. He had no obligation to any of his readers, addicts or otherwise. He wrote a book, Oprah liked it, her girls bought it. He made money - good for him. Why are these housewives pissed?

Redjake

This reminds me of "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Blurs fact and fiction to better illustrate a story. I guess people are pissed that James Fry didn't disclose the fact it was a combination of the two? O'Brien certainly did. Great book by the way.

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Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

Locobot

Yeah it only won the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. I suppose people like you were the reason that Franzen was hesitant about being a part of the Oprah book club.

pan6467

Ahhhh attacking my opinions and calling me names, why am I not surprised?

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

msh58

i just finished it tonight, about halfway through it i read that smoking gun article here. Book loses a lot of its power after that but i still got the same feeling from it that i did from reading fight club. Just easy to see how he could have developed a cult following for it. worth reading i thought if not believing.

snowy

The National Book Award says nothing about the quality of the book. All it says that is that it was well-liked by the judges who read it. A lot of so-called "literary fiction" that wins these awards are actually loads of crap that don't belong in the canon.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

mystmarimatt

True, most book award winners aren't really heard from again. The books, not the authors. Awards tend to be stepping stones for authors, a means to name recognition.

Conversely, tons of books that are amazing never recieve anything. "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," if I recall, never won anything, yet I'd argue it's one of the most influential pieces of work in the latter half of the 20th century.

You just never really know.

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Words of Wisdom:

If you could really get to know someone and know that they weren't lying to you, then you would know the world was real. Because you could agree on things, you could compare notes. That must be why people get married or make Art. So they'll be able to really know something and not go insane.