I understand that what matters to many people about Frey’s book, especially those who need inspiration to beat addictions, is the meaning that they get from reading it. I agree, it really doesn’t matter if the stories are fiction or reality, once the book is published. What matters to me, as a writer, is that Frey was not upfront about the nature of the memoir, that most of it came from his imagination not from personal experience. The controversy raises greater questions about trust and honesty between writers and readers.

Hi.

I work as a medical doctor specializing in addiction psychiatry.

A vast majority of the people I try and help treat felt most of the book was a lie.

However many found great meaning in his book.  That is what really matters.

Thanks,

Alfred.

Who cares if what he says is somewhat fictous. It is a great book, and I would recommend it to anyone. The man was withdrawing from drugs. I’m sure he couldn’t remmember absolutely everything. You people need to get lives. If the book upsets you then don’t read it and forget about it. Its not worth complaining about.

I read the book before all of the lies were exposed, and new it was filled with crap cliches and grandiose views of himself.  If you have any background with addiction this is evident.

But the true travisty of this book is the poo-pooing of the 12 step program.  The odds of staying sober are extremely low, but the idea of just gutting it out and “holding on,” is ludicrous.  We are supposed to believe that this was his means to his ends, when we have proof of all of his other fabrications.  WHAT ARE YOU TELLING THE TRUE ADDICT?

regardless of whether or not james freys book is completly truthful or not it is a wonderful book. It took alot of guts to write something like that and give the outside world a look at the life of drug addicts and alchoholics. i think that it was amazing and that it is a good book for this generation to raed and to learn how hard things can get when you follow the wrong paths!

I’m really interested to find out how big of a liar Frey really is. I hate to say it after getting so wrapped up in those books, but I think that it almost ALL is made up. How can one get out of jail and not make it there in time to be with a girl who’s grandmother has just died, if he never served the jail time at all in the first place?

I think Jim Frey is being let off too easy on this whole thing.

A writer quoted in the Christian Science Monitor article, posted on your site, makes the point that a memoirist should let their readers know if a book is a hybrid of fiction and fact. To me, this seems like a reasonable way to establish a relationship with your readers. But James Frey offers no such clarification. Even after reporters at The Smoking Gun revealed that key stories in his seemingly true memoir were, in fact, lies. To arrive at their conclusion, they spoke with credible sources on the record. Frey poo-pooed the reporters and defended his literary license. 

Sold as fiction, the stories are accepted as fiction. Sold as memoir without letting readers know that they are inhaling a huge bong hit of imagination, the stories are lies. Not embellished, not exaggerated, not collapsed time and composite characters, not dramatizations of the based-on-a-true-story variety. Lies.

Comparing Frey to memoirists such as Mary Karr and Tobias Wolff is a distinction he does not deserve. It would have been more appropriate for The Christian Science Monitor to round up James Frey with the group of writers most akin to himself, such as Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, and then host a round-robin on Oprah about how to lie with style and make millions from it.

Of course a memoir is unreliable as a source of objective truth. That’s not what a memoir does. By definition, a memoir tells the truth the way the writer remembers it, not the way the history books record it. The crucial fact is that it tells the truth, even if it is only the subjective truth.

The Frey ruckus illustrates a different problem. You cannot recall a truth that did not exist. A memoir is powerful because it is authentic and because the reader trusts in the authenticity. A “memoir” that invents history and presents it as fact violates that trust. Once we rationalize fabrication, what standards do we use to separate acceptable fabrication from unacceptable?

Shall we demand that memoir writers provide footnotes and references to prove they aren’t making the whole thing up? That would be destroying the genre in order to save it.

Has anyone suggested a comparison between this ‘partially fictionalized autobiography’ and the biography done about Reagan by an author, in the last decade, whose name escapes me at the moment Edward ?...I did not read that one either, but weren’t there descriptions by reviewers of long passages where the author put himself right into the action, and parts where he recontructed what Reagan was thinking without the aid of any documentation?  Ruth