If you watch the news or check out new sites on the Web, I am sure you are aware of the controversy surrounding the Oprah-blessed book, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I haven't seen/read too much about it in blog-land (at least those I read), so I thought I'd throw in my thoughts.
Admittedly I fall into a catatonic state ... "Must. Do. What. Oprah. Says."... so I read the book and briefly mentioned it in this October post. I didn't say all that much, but I did wonder how Frey could so explicity detail/recall conversations and events in the book. So I really took the book with the proverbial grain of salt, I thought it was a good read, and most certainly compelling, but I wasn't quite as orgasmic about it as Oprah, her staff, and her more devoted followers were/are.
But I was still interested enough to TiVo Frey's appearance on Larry King Live the other night (you can read the transcipt here)... and that is where Frey really lost me. His body language and general demeanor was just really cagey... he was repetitive in his arguments (by the end of the hour, I was fully aware that a "appropriately comfortable" "less than 5%" of the memoir was in dispute) and just inconsistent (one minute he is admitting to embellishments, the next minute it was how he best remembered events).
I just had issues with him trying to have it both ways -- if you can rely on personal journals and counselor notess, why fudge on other things that are "on the record." Sure, the focus of the book was recovery and not crime (the subject of most of the furor), so why even put it in the book in the first place?
Frey talks about changes being made for "efficiency" purpose... offering this example:
"In the book, I say I cut my cheek. In reality, what happened is when I fell down, my lower teeth tore up my lip and penetrated it in two separate places. I received the stitches I talked about receiving, but in the book I say, I cut my cheek... it's a lot easier than saying over and over again that I cut the area between my lower lip and my chin. You know, I believe that the essential truth of the event remains, there it's a large cut on my face."
Someone tell me how this is more efficient? A couple of seconds to read, an inch or two of print... and an insult to readers who apparently wouldn't be able to figure out that future mentions of the more concise "cut" was the original teeth/lip injury?
Now I am not angry about all this, but disappointed. While I am fully aware that a memoir is an author's "essential truth" (we certainly have had dueling Hollywood memoirs that offer wildly different versions of the same events), it seems that the writer should get the facts right, especially when the have the means to easily do so.
That said, I still feel a little bit sorry for Frey. I honestly believe that he was honest about the creativity of his work... there was some questions about where it belonged on bookstore shelves (apparently the book was originally shopped as fiction) from the get-go... but when it rose to national prominance thanks to Oprah and sold as "truth"... it is hard to back-peddle without tainting the entire work... which is a shame, since I really think it can (and did) provide inspiration to some people. (Future editions of the book will carry a special author's note).
On a sidenote, Larry King committed a typical cringe-worthy interviewing faux pas or two. When Frey brought up another disputed memoir, Larry noted that that author had killed himself (before taking a caller... "Mondovi, Wisconsin, hello" -- honest! check the transcript)... this following an earlier line of questioning asking Frey if the controvery would cause Frey to re-lapse, adding a return to drugs and alchohol "might be logical." Ouch, ouch, ouch!
Finally, another interesting debate on all this over at Entertainment Weekly.
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