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Date Posted: 15:15:58 01/27/06 Fri
Author: lump
Subject: Million Little Pieces
Anyone read it? I read on smokinggun.com that he tried to sell it as fiction, but couldn't. I think that makes an interesting statement about what publishers will sell, but I can't make a full decision unless I read it, and I just don't have the desire.
How do you feel about this issue though? The guy lied. My dear friend who did read it told me that she didn't think it mattered because the guy helped people. I disagree, but then I'm a stickler for literary rules.
How many people publish books that are full of crap? Do you really think Dr. Phil is an expert at love and can tell you how to find it? Sylvia Brown puts out a book every year - and she's not always right. Should we, like Oprah did yesterday, put them on a stand over their written word? Or should we use our own better judgement and just avoid the crap (or read it for amusement)?
Why is it ok to publish this book as non-fiction (though come on...what dentist WOULD do a root canal without novecane?) but not fiction? If nothing else, isn't this one point the guy made doing this worthy?
Perhaps I can now publish the book about me growing up without a parent having braids that stuck out of my head and owning (and having in my house) a horse that changed colors. I call it Pipi Lie Stockings.
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- tg, 15:26:43 01/27/06 Fri [1]
He was on Larry King and he said it was his recollection of what happened. I don't buy that and it should be fiction. His mother was on the show with him and she said he did have a drug problem, but wasn't aware of all the stuff that went on. The Smokingun has his arrest records and some of the things in his book,came up false. He said in his book he was in jail for a couple of months, when it was only a couple of hours. C'mon!!
I wish I watched Oprah, she was the one who had the book on her list and that's what opened up this whole can of worms.
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- lump, 15:36:23 01/27/06 Fri [1]
That guy doesn't even look like he ever had a drug problem.
I saw them interview his childhood neighbor that grew up and graduated with him and he said Mr. Frey was a popular team player who drank once in a while.
I just think for the people who do have problems like he described - SHAME ON HIM! He exploited and stereotyped them.
I heard (before Oprah freaked out) that the publisher was giving people their money back on that book. True? If so, the guy better find another scam because I don't think he'll be published again unless it is to speak about this experience.
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- 23, 15:57:59 01/27/06 Fri [1]
Oh, he'll be published again. He sold millions of books. Lies don't matter in the face of $$$$
I read that smokingun article, but I haven't read the book. I think he's a lying sack of shit. I don't know how relevant it is that he's helped people or not. That's all fine and dandy, but he went on interview after interview saying this book was true. He made up entire scenarios, entire characters, I think it puts integrity in question in general. And who wants to pattern their life/recovery after a guy with no integrity.
He deserves whatever shit hits his fan/face. And he didn't have to agree to having his book published as non-fiction. You can always say "no." Or he could have simply not said it was true in all of those interviews.
His pants are TOTALLY on fire.
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- lump, 16:18:56 01/27/06 Fri [1]
I wouldn't say his pants are on fire.
But being someone who also did different drugs back ... way back (for Lotus's FBI family) ...way a long time ago...
Does that guy strike you as someone who has done anything but drink Busch?
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- 23, 16:24:10 01/27/06 Fri [1]
>Does that guy strike you as someone who has done
>anything but drink Busch?
Pabst, actually. And no, he doesn't.
But I know some drug users who don't fit the stereotype, either.
I don't doubt that he used, he just really exaggerated the consequences of his usage. He was actually one of the people targeted in a campus drug task force back when he was in college (he was a small-time coke dealer). That part was true. But the FBI wasn't at all involved. He said he was accosted by an FBI agent over that whole thing. The Smoking Gun talked with the cop who headed the task force, and he said he'd never worked with the FBI in his entire life, but that yes, James Frey was one of the more minor target in their investigation.
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- lump, 16:28:43 01/27/06 Fri [1]
He was probably just selling coke for the ladies....that's usually it with the small timers, isn't it?
Druggy! j/k I guess I do know people too that don't fit a stereotype, but I think you can still kinda tell. But then I'm all squeaky clean so I don't know much. O;)
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- tg, 17:24:39 01/27/06 Fri [1]
Does anyone watch the show WEEDS about a suburban housewife who sells pot? I've watched it a couple of times, it's a good show.
I think James Frey is probably kicking himself about the truth of the book. The way he's acting though, is complete denial that he did anything wrong. He's a pathological liar.
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- tg, 18:10:05 01/27/06 Fri [1]
I'm sure having the book on a show like Oprah didn't help his sham. It kinda blew up in his face.
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- Robert, 11:12:04 01/28/06 Sat [1]
GRRR...I clicked clear instead of send!
In short (I'm not re-typing my whole answer)...I think that this guy is ethically wrong for lying about addiction, when people who suffer with it have looked to his work for a way out of their opwn darkness. I suffered through addiction to Rx meds, and it changed me a lot. You can't know what it's like unless you have been addicted to something and had to get clean. To that end, shame on him for lying...but at the same time, he seems to have known enough to write a book that resonated with and helped people.
It's a wash IMO. I'd likely question anything he ever writes again...so to that end he's lost the one thing that is important among all others...your word. My dad and my grandfather both told me that at the end of the day, the only thing that a man truly owns is his word...and once you've lost that, it doesn't matter how much money you make, or how much power you obtain in life...if your word doesn't mean anything, you're worthless.
Ethics...good to see that they still matter to many people :)
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- tg, 15:32:36 01/28/06 Sat [1]
NEW YORK (AP) - James Frey, disgraced author of A Million Little Pieces, has a hard luck story he doesn't want to share: he will not write a book about the unravelling of his admittedly tainted million-selling memoir of addiction and recovery.
"I think writing a book about this experience would be trying to capitalize on it in some way and that's not something I want to do at all," Frey said in a segment on Oprah Winfrey's syndicated talk show that was taped but not immediately aired, after Thursday's explosive program when Winfrey turned against the author whose book she endorsed last fall.
Frey's comments were part of Oprah After the Show, a conversation featuring Frey, Winfrey and publisher Nan Talese to be broadcast Friday night on the Oxygen network, a cable channel Winfrey helped found.
Despite Frey's on-air humiliation, when Winfrey berated him and the author acknowledged key parts of the books were invented, A Million Little Pieces kept on selling. On Friday, it was in the top five on both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.
Meanwhile, publishers and agents agreed tighter scrutiny is needed after Talese acknowledged what the industry knows well but perhaps not the general public: memoirs are not fact-checked.
Despite calls from Winfrey and others to tighten standards, many doubt publishers will hire fact-checkers.
"Publishing companies run on pretty tight budgets and there's just not enough time to check every book," said Viking associate publisher Paul Slovak.
"But it is possible that somebody might look at these books with a slightly more alert eye."
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- chrys, 18:36:22 01/29/06 Sun [1]
lots of thoughts on this topic...actually got into a semi-argument with a friend of mine who says it's no big deal if the things he wrote weren't true.
i totally disagreed, because if it's not true, that's fine, and that's fiction. whoever on here pointed out that he could have said "no" to them publishing it as non-fiction, is right on. if you think about it, that's what a lot of fiction is - an embellishment of a real life story, and plenty of fiction books have their impact and can also help people.
the part that bugs me i guess, is the doubt it casts on other writers. i think i have mentioned that i'm part of a memoir writing group here on the island, about six or seven of us (depending on the season and the drama, lol) who are actually looking to put it in print one day. and there are times when you have to fudge a little - for example, you may have to change names and places due to legal issues. an example that comes to mind is alice sebold's Lucky, which is an excellent book. she says to protect friends and family, some of those details hae been changed. or people may publish under a pseudonym (half-considering that myself) or whatever. usually those books (and i know this is true for lucky) are vetted for legal things like that. you would think they would do some fact-checking along the way as well.
i think it's one thing to fill in details that you might remember vaguely, or to use direct quotes in a story, for the sake of storytelling, though in real life you may not know the EXACT words that were once said. was it "pass the peas please," or "please pass the peas?" who cares, as long as you have the basic truth straight. the point is that i think it's important to "not let the facts get in the way of the truth," but also to take extreme caution that what you are saying is the truth as you know it.
for example, and this is where i was going with the group thing, one of us is writing a book about india, and she is going to painstaking lengths to make sure that everything she says, especially when it relates to india's political climate, is researched and fact-checked. and i mean loads and loads of research. i'm starting (as my first rough draft is done) to add in the research aspect myself. i also tend to be anal so like say i'm going to write about a concert as an example, i would go and find the setlist no matter what just to make sure i didn't put anything out of order. the other day i was working on something i wrote about the school of the americas and i spent hours online looking at the old SOA historical site and some of their watch sites. when i made rerence to an essay, i went and found details online. i also made a reference to the movie Contact and so just to make sure i had it right, i d/l'd the entire script, lol. so maybe that is a bit much, but its like, that is part of the job, if you want to write non-fiction. it's part of the drudgework i would say. and it's not the fun part like writing is, but it's important. memory is a shifty thing. a lot of us in the group are also finding people we can have as "first readers," friends who can help keep us honest, or say things like, "wait i thought it happened this way," or "but you told me..."
so it kinda pisses me off what this guy is doing b/c it's lazy, and i do think it's unethical, and disrespectful in a way to people who really have gone through addiction or whatever. just feels really dishonest. also not a good idea to play the publishing game. its yours until you sign it over, and you can always say no, this is fiction, or you can find another publisher. integrity is importnat.
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- lump, 10:16:22 01/30/06 Mon [1]
I must have hit clear instead of send!
Anyhow, I believe his next book was about the guy he never met in jail.
It kinda makes me sick that it'll probably sell better for the next few weeks than it did before.
And yeah, landing on Oprah's book list is any writers dream. It means instant success. I like her reading list - she really does go to painstaking lengths to pick good quality stuff. I know when she chose this book, some people were shocked because it's blunt and vulgar.
I can understand being a fustrated writer trying to make a living at what you do. I can understand even testing waters to see if your story would sell as non-fiction. But doing it and letting people like Oprah talk you up to billions of people? He's a low life. And yes, Rob - I liked your sentiment about the word. This guy can't live up to that.
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Re: Million Little Pieces -- tg, 12:48:30 02/12/06 Sun [1]
Reality Bites
Do disclaimers give memoirists license to invent?
By Meghan O'Rourke
In 2002, a man published a memoir chronicling his substance abuse and the months he spent in jail after committing a crime. When a reporter discovered that the memoir was built around a fabrication, the author defended his embellishments in the name of literary license: "What I was doing was a literary genre known as a memoir," he explained, and pointed to a disclaimer in his book noting that identifying details had been changed. The man was not James Frey. He was Jimmy A. Lerner, the author of You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish, published by Broadway Books. The fabrication was a significant one. The book describes Lerner's murder of a thuggish 6-foot-3 maniac he calls "the Monster," in a drug-fueled fight to the death in a hotel room. In fact, as David Kirkpatrick later reported in the New York Times Magazine, Lerner had actually killed a 5-foot-4 former medical equipment salesman who may not have been armed.
Confronted with Lerner's and Frey's blithe willingness to tell lies, it's time to ask: How much leeway does a disclaimer really give an author? Take the disclaimers that James Frey and his publishers recently announced they're appending to forthcoming editions of A Million Little Pieces. "I altered events and details all the way through the book. [One such embellishment] involved jail time I served, which in the book is three months, but which in reality was only several hours," Frey writes in a defensive three-page "Author's Note" that avoids cut-and-dried accountability. He insists that his changes were artistically motivated—serving "what I felt was the greater purpose of the book"—and studiously avoids the word fabrication. Meanwhile, Doubleday's "Publisher's Note" may strike some readers as evasive at best: "We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of A Million Little Pieces," Doubleday writes, announcing that it also plans to take out ads "concerning these developments." Precisely what these ads would contain is unclear.
The original function of a disclaimer—which commonly read, "Names and identifying details have been changed"—was to protect the publisher from being sued by people who recognized themselves in an author's portrait. The disclaimers offered by Frey and Lerner, however, serve the opposite purpose. These disclaimers protect the authors from our realization that the people in their "nonfiction" books are not real people at all. Rather, these once "real" people have been so altered as to be inventions—fictions serving the author's story of redemption. Nothing about these caveats protects identities; nor are they present merely to suggest that the author's memory is imperfect or note that elisions have been made for narrative economy.
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