Good article on James Frey

[yendi]

In light of Frey's admission that he embellished the truth (and by "embellished," of course, I mean "didn't always tell"), and his appearance on Oprah to apologize for fooling her and getting her to help him sell gazillions of copies of A Million Little Pieces, Sarah Saffian has a good look at his apology, the nature of memoirs, and some of the fallout.

Interestingly, AMLP is still #4 at Amazon in terms of sales. Obviously, the charges aren't hurting the book; if anything, they're likely helping it.

Comments

[thelastrobot.livejournal.com]

I've spent the last few years working in bookstores, so I knew this book existed(that is to say, I'd seen the cover) but I didn't know anything about it until I read the expose on The Smoking Gun. Interesting stuff.

One thing I love(but also understand) is how people jumped to his defense. People attacked TSG, but if you read the article, they didn't even really look into it until they were looking for his mugshot for their gallery(?) and they couldn't find it where he said it was in the book. The town he said he got arrested. So, it isn't like TSG went out to knock this guy down or something. Maybe that's what they usually do, I'm not sure, it's the first real thing I read on TSG.

Anyway, it's amazing to me how reaction to this whole thing seems to go from angry denial to apathy. People saying things like, "Who cares? There are more important things in the world." Are there? Isn't this, to a degree, what's so "important" to people? Someone trying to decieve everyone? I mean, sure, James Frey didn't kill anyone's family, you know, but he still affected people's lives in a big way. And did it through presenting fiction as non-fiction.

The point can be made, of course, "Well, he only changed some stuff". Maybe. But that just discredits the true things.

I don't know. As you can see, this is a topic of interest to me. And my opinion is mostly based on the reactions of others and the Smoking Gun article. Of course, it was a pretty long article...

[yendi]

TSG, in general, just goes looking for those interesting legal documents like his arrest report. They really don't aim to dubunk folks, so I find it hard to really blame them here.

Personally, not having read the book, I tend more towards apathy, but I see the arguments from people on all sides. I do think it's a relatively complicated issue, with some grey areas that aren't always being acknowledged.

[thelastrobot.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I figured, about TSG. Yeah, I can certainly understand apathy when you haven't read the book. I haven't, either. I'm sure I'm so interested in this for the same reasons I like Penn & Teller: Bullshit!.

But, yeah, it's definitely complicated.

[sainthuck.livejournal.com]

It was weird timing for me. I'd been meaning to pick it up for months, but never did until the Media Play store closings came along before Christmas. That was *before* this whole brouhaha came about, and I haven't read the book yet. Now, I'm wondering if I even should, because the whole thing will be colored with the specter of 'did he make this up or not'?

[thelastrobot.livejournal.com]

All I can say is I'm so glad Media Play closed. Their loss was my DVD collection's gain.