one more thing then…

his book hasn’t been proven to help anyone over any significant period of time. its premise is flawed. the only was it could help anyone is if it were *true*. then people would know that it could actually be done his way - but it wasn’t! he - made - it - up. it is fiction.

in reality, he is doing great damage to the work that professionals in a rehab setting have worked years to put in place. he is telling people they can do it on their own. for the vast majority of them, that might be appealing, but also very likely unsuccessful. he didn’t really do it, and they won’t be able to either.

k, liz. i’ll bite. you’re making my point for me.

isn’t it important that we don’t continue to dilute the term “truth”. do you want future “non-fiction” acounts of this oil war to be whatever the author, or some conservative interest group, wants it to be?

the outrage is justified. and people don’t have to focus on just one thing at a time. i could argue that instead of worrying about the oil war, where a few people die a day, you should instead be fighting famine, or AIDS, where many more people die in an hour than in a day in Iraq. how are you picking your battle(s).

bottom line: there is plenty of time and energy in most people’s days to be concerned about more than one topic at a time. the trashing of a whole genre of literature by an @sshat and a talk show host is on my list right now.

I can see it already.  Much like like Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code, James Frey’s genre-bending book will spawn a million little pieces of debunking lit.  Both reputable publishers and vanity presses across the country are licking their chops waiting for anyone, from Frey’s former college room-mates to the cops who busted him for DIU, to present themselves as the righteous experts setting him and us straight on how it really was.  There is money in that sort of business for both the debunking writer, no matter how amateur, as well as the publishers.  Thesmokinggun.com has already made itself into a household name with that strategy.  And all because they could not find mugshots of Frey for their already extensive gallery, which by the way seems to be their primary raison d’etre.

It is pathetic!!!  We are supposed to be whipped into moral outrage over a writer’s embellishments, but half of this country still believes the the WMD story and refuses to call those responsible for it to account.

What this is really all about is genre, the expectations it creates in the reader, and the confusion that results when these expectations are not fulfilled, when writers deliberately play with genre and genre expectations.  However, genre is an artificial tool to categorize text, music, film, etc.  Whatever value or significance we assign to it, fortunately, is relative and can change.  The impact of the story though need not necessarily change with that. 

Many of those who believed the WMD story when it was presented as fact still believe it now, even though it has long turned out to be fiction.  Moreover, they still support the war it led to.  In what way then does Frey’s story lose power when we find out that it too was not fact but fiction?  At the very least Frey’s “lies” do not kill people; on the contrary, they seem to have inspired some to change their lives for the better.

Bottom line though, as guillaume points out, isn’t there more important stuff going on in our screwed up world?

who cares, guillaume?

well over 3-million people bought his ‘non-fiction memoir’. so i guess they care.

people are chatting about it all over virtually every media channel. i guess they care.

we read this blog and posted here (so did you!). so i guess we care.

that’s who.

if you care so much about the ‘war at home’, stop wasting your time posting on book discussions and get to work! you’ve got flyers to fly and posters to post and TV interviews to do… oh maybe not.

fyi: the furor is not about one book. it is about a general degradation of the use of the terms ‘true’, ‘truth’, ‘non-fiction’. it crosses the boundaries between media, politics and corporate behavior. do you not see the connection between widely published lies, whether it is in the context of the government speaking to its people, or respected publishers trashing the non-fiction genre?

these political scandals and this oil war that you seem to care about… people are gonna have to write about it, now and in the future - document the history and tell personal accounts of their involvement. wouldn’t it be nice if you could count on those wiritings to be accurate to the the best of the authors’ and the publishers’ abilities? that’s what this is really about.

Guillame (and Amanda),
What’s one thing got to do with the other? (the war and Frey) You’re being disingenuous of course, when you say you’re confused.  But I’ll take you at face value.  Please go to my blog, mentined above and read Mary Karr or many of the other writers who think it is a big dea..  You will no longer be confused.

Who cares?  Isn’t there a war and some home-grown spying going on?
I am confused.

Hi Ron, Great Follow up. You summed it up to a “T” I doube you will see anybody who can argue with that. Thank You.

After finishing about a quarter of the book I had o ask myself, how could a guy who was so under the influence of drugs and then the pain that is a part f the withdrawl process have such a recal to events several years before?  To me, the book was too well written for it to be a viable recall of events.  I wonder if Oprah asked herself the same thing while reading it?

I did enjoy the book and am looking forward to his next book, My Friend Leonard. 

I would like it if James would let us know if the characters in the book were real or fabricated?  I tend to think that the majority of the meat in the book was fairly accurate. 

Also, did anyone notice all the unecessary capitalized words?  He capitalized tons of words that should not have been capitalized.  I can only wonder who proof read it.

Kirk

why are you letting him off so easy? you seem to be missing the whole point. the book is only compelling if it is *true*. if it is not true, and he didn’t really do time, didn’t kick an extreme, life-threatening crack habit by very unconventional means… if he’s not this badass he made up and is really just a spoiled frat boy with a few DUIs and a booze and coke problem.. then the story has no power!

further, he is from my wife’s hometown. he went to school with my sister-in-law. there are giant inaccuracies, and misappropriation of another family’s tragedy (namely that he had anything to do with the death and aftermath of the girl[s] who died in the train accident). to me, it says that what he has currently admitted to falsifying is likely just the tip of the iceberg: was there really a leonard and were they really friends? was there a lilly and did she really die just hours before he could get to her? if not, again, the story has no power.

if we could just make up fantastical stuff and call it true/memoir/non-fiction… then why don’t we all write stories about how we can fly, just by flapping. or cure cancer by touching people, i swear i can do it, i’m just not gonna show you cuz i don’t feel like i want people probing my life… even though i pubilshed a f***ing memoir!

please do not let self-aggrandizing, sh1t-talking liars off this easily. sickens me to think he profited off his BS. and profited off me. i bought AMLP and MFL. finished AMLP just a day before this broke. will NOT be reading MFL - ever. it has now truth or power anymore.

for more on frey and response:
http://memoirisnotfiction.blogspot.com/

I think everyone is blowing this way out of proportion.  James Frey is not staking claim to affecting any historical events.  He may have embellished some jail time. Big deal!  His book is a great book - end of story.  It is written in a very different style, it is compelling and I think it could help people who have problems with addiction and/or people who are trying to understand those people.  I saw Charlize Theron last night saying that her latest movie was a true story although her character was made up!  How then can the story be true if the main character is invented?  This kind of thing happens all of the time in books and movies, someone has just decided to attack Mr. Frey which I think is a shame.  I think Mr. Frey took a very difficult period in his life and did something good with it and if he added some “fluff” to it to get it out there then fine.  I don’t think it detracts from the book or from his experiences.

It’s a joke.  People are placing saving face above the respectability of literature.  My opinion of Oprah dropped big time.  And well, James Frey--total loser.