If a best-selling memoir isn’t actually a memoir, but rather, a work of fiction, does it make it any less worthy a read? That’s the question some folks may be asking about A Million Little Pieces, the Oprah-endorsed book by James Frey (left) that was the No. 2 best-seller in the U.S. in 2005, now that a bombshell article on The Smoking Gun web site claims many of Frey’s tales of bad behavior were fabricated or embellished.
Smoking Gun editor William Bastone tells Reuters that one anecdote in which Frey writes about assaulting a police officer was, in actuality, "as vanilla an incident as you will ever see." What’s even more eyebrow-raising to me, though, is Bastone’s comment that "in off-the-record interviews with us, Frey admitted embellishing facts in the book for dramatic impact." Um, dude, if the interviews were off-the-record, how come you’re blabbing about ‘em?
Anyhow, whose account do you think is more believable: Frey’s or the Smoking Gun’s? And, in the end, does it make a difference if Frey’s story is something less than the whole truth? Weigh in now!
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Of course you are going to embellish the facts to make a compelling read. If the memoir was well-written (I haven’t read it) then who cares how much is true and how much is embellished?
Embellishing makes it more interesting. Frey ROCKS! He is a fascinating person and nobody can take that away from him.
It matters that he capitalized on someone else’s real tragedy. The lies about his own arrest are immaterial to me, but he refers to schoolmates beating him up over the death of two girls, as well as being close to those girls.
I don’t hate him for writing what must be a very lonely person’s secret wish to have known and loved two pretty girls who died during his high school years. But I feel a little weird that he sold that at nonfiction and made a pile of money, and without the permission of their families (or any offer to share the wealth or build some kind of worthwhile scolarship).
That book is a pretty lie, but some people *like* pretty lies, and that’s their right.
Oprah needs to research these authors. She has an army of devoted fans who will follow her into unfortunate circumstances…
I think it makes a big difference: a memoir is supposed to be a retelling of a personal experience. Let him write a novel if he wants to embellish.
Like Augusten Burroughs doesn’t embellish?!?
the book is from his point of view, from his standpoint and what he felt about the whole situtation. who cares if some of the facts got embellished a bit. its from his point of view in a haze of drugs and drink. To a sober person to one that is high and drunk, the same situtation will play out in totally different ways…
His point of view? Have you even read Frey’s book? The stories in it are not merely a difference in “point of view.” They are outright lies!
It’s fine if he wanted to write a fiction work, but he should have marketed it truthfully — as a novel, not a memoir. Or even a roman a clef if there was some truth to it. To sell this as a striaght up memoir is crap.
I just finished reading the book and find it disheartening that he lied throughout the book. I couldn’t put it down mainly because I thought it was non-fiction, not a figment of his imagination.
You’re missing two points that TSG editors make very clear. First, it’s one thing if Frey simply wrote his “memoir” and left it at that. But he has repeatedly gone out of his way to insist — to Oprah and everyone who will listen — that it’s 100% true. Second, the “off the record” issue is addressed earlier in the piece, where TSG notes that Frey posted one of TSG’s emails on his website. That email discussed some of the supposed “off the record” issues, so TSG assumed that Frey no longer considered such issues “off the record.”
I could go on about how repugnant it is to appropriate (and modify) someone’s personal tragedy to gin up personal drama, or how the lies undercut the selling of the book as a real-life inspiration to others, but I fear we’re all just creating ammunition for Frey’s next “memoir,” where he seeks treatment because the world is out to get him.
the fact that much of the book was either embellished or outright made up takes away the only thing the book had going for it- the supposed truthful first person account of a harrowing life of drug addiction. the book is VERY poorly written and repetitive, the characters unlikeable and the situations unreasonable/unbelievable.
serves him right for lying. I’m sick of his machismo brand of writing anyway. it’s like “I’m not writing down my feelings! That’s for girls! I’m just telling you how it was” (not really!)
um, i consider myself pretty “worldly” and i have never heard of this guy, or his memoirs.
Well, duh. I read the book and I figures that some of it was embellished, but I still thought it was a compelling read, nonetheless. I would read portions of it and say, “okay, that’s too out there.” My main problem with the book was that I didn’t like his writing style – he didn’t leave anything to the imagination, it was all laid out there…. which I guess was the point, so whatever…
Embellishing is one thing. But he completely lies about incidents that did not happen or he was not really a part of. He has traded his addicition for booze and drugs to an addiction of lies.
Reinforcing Jeff: Smoking Gun mentions early on the “off the record” text was kept off the record until Frey put the interview on the record on his own Web site.
And I agree, anony, Frey is a fascinating person. Most pathological liars are. He’s sitting in his multimillion dollar Manhattan apartment, quietly laughing at all the suckers who paid for it.
I think he’s laughing all the way to the bank. Any publicity (even bad) is good publicity. This “drama” will make him more than a household name, and the books (however fictional) were a great read. You literally couldn’t buy this kind of publicity.
He has enough money from the recent sales of the book and screenplay to insulate his family from the fallout.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was planned to play out exactly this way. Geez, how many people can say they duped Oprah into making them tens of millions?
The literati loathe the kind of power she yields with her book club recommendations, and would love nothing more than to see her made a fool of.
He’s made tons of money, his screenplay and film rights have sold, and he has a two book deal with Riverhead to write fiction. Win-Win-Win. I think he’s a genius.
I bet the excellent reporting of the Smoking Gun is the tip of the iceberg of the lies in Frey’s badly written novel-posing-as-memoir. I seriously doubt that there is a lawyer at Hazelden who interceded with police departments on Frey’s behalf regarding what the police say now are imaginary charges. He’s counted on the rehab center’s silence. I hope Hazelden comes clean instead of backing his account of its active role in his legal-trouble lies. What Frey couldn’t sell as fiction, he decided to pitch as truth. Is this damaging? Clearly, what he’s addicted to is lying, and he’s hardly a poster boy for the power of leaving bad behaviors behind you.
There’s a scene in the book in which a rock star (Steven Tyler???) visits Hazelden, and Frey wants to kill him because the rock star was embellishing his addiction to the patients in the center. Most of the book is false, e.g., no airline is going to let a vomit/snot/urine/blood/spit-soaked unconscious passenger on a plane; there is no reason a dentist can’t provide a local for root canal to a drug rehab patient; no counselor at Hazelden would drive a patient to a crackhouse without being fired. I could go on and on and on. Frey has set himself up as an inspiration for other people who are genuinely struggling with these issues by claiming his success over these horrors is true. There’s a special place in Hell for people who play with other people’s life and death issues in this way.
If it’s classified simply as a memoir, it certainly does matter if it’s based on true events. If it’s embellished, say so. No one’s going to banish your book from the shelves. We’re living in an era when all sorts of genres are cross-pollinating with each other. But don’t promote your book as something it’s not…or else a story like this might unfold.
That said, this controversy will likely increase his sales tenfold. Hmmm. He’s clever, that lying memoirist.
Since when does reality matter? Take a look at Ron Howard’s “A Beautiful Mind”. Ron’s less than factual view of John Nash’s life completely left out the part where he left his wife for a bit, began dating men and then, eventually, went back to his wife. That baby won Oscars!
But hey — it made a great movie, right? Who cares about authenticity!
First of all some of you need to debate “truth”. The whole point of a memoir and memories is that they are clouded due to the distance of time. The “truth” that is garnered from the memory is not the facts, but the impact it has had on the individual or the lesson learned so to speak. Anyone remember the movie Fargo and how it claimed it was a true story? It was completely fabricated, but the Coen Brothers, being the artists that they are, were playing with the concept of truth. I have always cared little for so-called “true stories”, because somehow they claim authenticity or something. One of my pet peeves is how somehow “Based on True Events” somehow legitimizes a story for people.
Wow – you people are angry. It’s not like TSG announced that Frey found the manuscript on the street and passed it off as his own – we’re talking about some very minor embellishments on his part at the most. The book was still great (granted the writing style takes getting used to but I liked it) and the theme and tone and general story are all true. Relax. If any of us wrote a memoir and didn’t embellish anything, nobody would read it. Frankly, I can’t wait for the movie – Ryan Gosling and Jake Gyllenhaal are rumoured as possible leads – could be fantastic!
i loved this book…the most impacting parts to me weren’t the incidents he talked about, but his feelings about his addictions. i do think if it is published as true, then it should be…but which one of you hasn’t embellished a story you were telling about something that happened to you for dramatic effect? i can’t wait to read “my friend leonard”…
A book sold as a non-fiction memoir should be true. Will someone remember every single detail? Of course not. Is embellishing ok? Some. But don’t make up things and try to pass them off as something you really went through. How is that fair to the reader? Is it any less harrowing if it’s fiction?
It’s stunning how many people are willing to swallow whole-cloth lies because they’re so much more “interesting” than the truth. “If the memoir is well-written… then who cares how much is true?” Maybe the thousands of people who’ve stated that they used Frey as their inspiration? Part of addiction recovery is TRUTHFULLY admitting your misdeeds to another. Not only is Frey not doing that, he’s adding more lies to the pile! And if “truth” is no big thing to you – how would you like it if your doctor admitted he only “audited” his med school classes?
A “memoir” is factual; a “novel” is fiction. Selling one as the other is fraud. Period.
This whole TSG article comes across very “swift boatish.” Seems they are set on destroying Frey, if they can’t verify something he must be lying. That being said Frey should put his cards on the table. If TSG is right admit he embellished the story. If the stories are correct he should back up with more details and evidence, then sue the hell out of TSG….
It is not a “minor embellishment” to write yourself into someone else’s train wreck and cite it as a major factor in your development as an adult.
I have seen him at readings for the book, he admits that facts have been changed, manipulated, embellished and moved around for the purposes of dramatization.
He is very upfront about the whole thing.
Lily’s name wasn’t Lily, neither was Leonard, Leonard. If they’re dead, their stories were more than likely changed and their names def. were.
He is very forthcoming and honest about the whole thing.
The most interesting part of this whole thing, to me, is that this story broke yesterday but is just hitting the mainstream press today.
Also, very similar accusations were made against Dave Eggers when his memoirs, A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius was published a few years back.
“”If the memoir is well-written… then who cares how much is true?” Maybe the thousands of people who’ve stated that they used Frey as their inspiration?”
I don’t think it’s fair to say that people who used Frey’s story for inspiration have been duped. Nobody is refuting the harrowing story of addiction and recovery that he went through, which is the true inspiration of this story. Even if the entire sections on his past crimes were ficticious, who cares? That wasn’t the main point of the book – recovery in detox was the point, which, as far as I know, is all true. And if people have been inspired? Isn’t that a good thing?