Heh. Just two days ago in my little rant about publishers no longer caring about literary quality, so long as they can lure readers with promises of vicariously indulging in the more exotic aspects of the author’s purportedly exciting life, I mentioned Exile writer John Dolan calling bullshit on James Frey’s drug-addiction “memoir” A Million Pieces when it was published in 2003. Dolan had recently appealed to Exile readers to help dig up the dirt, or rather the lack of it, in Frey’s past.
Not surprisingly, Dolan is not the only reviewer who suspected that Frey was, at least, embellishing his history of drugs and prison time. Nor is it surprising that others have been more successful in finding out the truth about Frey, what with Dolan living in Moscow.
Stupid me, I didn’t search around on the web to find that on the same day I posted that item, The Smoking Gun published a lengthy examination of Frey’s self-claimed history of criminality and mayhem, and found it all to be either highly exaggerated, or completely fabricated.
The New York Times (use Bugmenot to get around registration) is now covering the story of Frey’s fakery, which has so far scored him millions in book sales and movie deals, largely thanks to the golden endorsement of Oprah’s Book Club (“a gut-wrenching memoir that is raw and it’s so real”). The book is the perfect vehicle for Oprah’s club: a melodramatic confection of squalid thrills, the terrible drugs (inevitably addictive), all topped off with a smug little redemption fable. A lucrative redemption fable.
Of particular interest in the Times story are the following quotes:
Mr. Frey said that he had provided extensive documentation of his account of events in “A Million Little Pieces” to lawyers at Random House Inc., the parent of Doubleday and Anchor Books, which published the paperback edition, and to lawyers at Harpo, the production company owned by Ms. Winfrey.
What? You have to have your credentials checked by a roomful of lawyers before Oprah will publicly admit to liking your book?
And, I wish I could have quoted this on Sunday to save me the trouble:
The discrepancies and Mr. Frey’s reported admissions of falsifying details of his life raise questions about the publishing industry’s increasing reliance on nonfiction memoirs as a fast track to the best-seller list.
