Remember that guy who always tried to one-up your stories? Or who embellished every stupid story to make himself sound worse or better than he really was? The guy who insisted that he did some blow with a squeaky clean pop band when you know he hasn’t left town in eight years? Et cetera.
James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard, appears to be the kind of liar you love to hate. At the very least, Frey’s definitions of “honesty” and “transparency” are deviant and the difference between fiction and nonfiction is blurred. This is disappointing because I so loved both of his books. His memoirs, billed as patent truth, appear to be laughably embellished, inciting all kids of eyerolling on my part for making James Frey into That Guy. I’m holding out for Frey’s rebuttal, but it don’t look so good.
The Smoking Gun has the details. Filed under “Crime, Or Lack Thereof.”
UPDATE: Salon has more on the Frey unveiling, though it’s becoming clear that this is more about literary schadenfreude than the guy’s talent. And he has talent.
UPDATE II: This is so evil, but Neal Pollack’s take #2 cracked me up. See take #1, from Dada in the comments below.
Interesting. On the same day that the Times reports that JT Leroy may be a fraud.
Somehow this doesn’t surprise me. Frey always came off as such a tool in interviews.
I liked Neal Pollack’s response to him:
Link.
Whoa.
I saw that ep of Oprah and took an instant and inexplicable dislike to Frey. Not to the book itself, or the emotional testimonials, but to Frey himself. I studied his face and just felt highly mistrustful. And I couldn’t explain why. It just seemed that something was just not as it should be.
Jeez.
Whoops. He should have sold it as fiction.
Dadahead, such a lovely post :)
Oh, me too. That was brilliant. Thank you, Neal Pollack.
The Smoking Gun says he tried to sell it as fiction, but it was rejected, so he “omitted the fake stuff” and then sold it as a memoir. Hello?! That wasn’t a red flag at his publishers’?
The saddest part to me was inserting himself into the train accident tragedy– how sad for those kids’ parents to see someone use that incident that way.
No, no, that’s not good writing. If you like this type of stuff and want to read accomplished prose, pick up a copy of Denis Johnson’s book, “Jesus’ Son.”
“No, no, that’s not good writing.”
He’s parodying Frey. If it was good writing, it wouldn’t work.
A spoiled frat boy exploits the tragic aspects of others’ lives.
That sentence would be marginally less believable if I had written “frat boy” and “tragic” as proper nouns.
You know, I loved the books but had the same feeling. He was, in every way, That Guy. That Guy I’ve always known to never believe — contrived and stupid. But because I loved the books I cut him some slack and figured he wasn’t a good interviewee. I’m beginning to realize why I didn’t like him so much.
Denis Johnson kicks ass, though.
I love the final line of The Smoking Gun article, where they let Frey epitomise the irony attching to his next (acknowledged) novel:
He noted, “I’m looking forward to showing people that I can write fiction.”
I rather love the fact that TheSmokingGun stumbled on the story while looking to make merry mischief with Frey’s criminal mugshots – of which there were strangely very few despite the digging.
One commenter over at Salon has already raised doubts about Frey’s defensive claims that he managed to “expunge” most existing records (how, exactly? Is there are special dispensation for memoir writers with a bashful streak?).
But mostly, I’m alarmed at apologists for Frey who insist there is still an “emotional truth” to his words that transcends factual accuracy. I keep thinking of the widely published last letter fragment by one of the tragic miners to his family, in which the man wrote soothingly – and with great dignity – about “going to sleep now” and “seeing them on the other side”. I was moved by their courage and pathos BECAUSE of the circumstances in which they were composed. Take the context away and much of their meaning evaporates – as with Frey.
(Thanks for the terrific Neal Pollack extracts!)
…Everyone loves a violent asshole, I guess.
Some of the same justifications are coming up for JT Leroy: that the dupees deserved it because they were credulous and more interested in storyteller than story, that it helped draw attention to the plight of homeless HIV+ transwomen sex workers, etc.
What the fuck ever, is about all I have to say. “Emotional truth” is what most people find in fiction, even–especially, sometimes!–when it’s presented as fiction. That’s how fiction writers manage to keep readers interested in the lives of nonexistent people: they describe fictional lives that echo our present ones.
[...] y guy who wrote a bunch of shitty prose about being a hardened criminal and drug addict is just a huge fraud. The whole matter has inspired me to come clean. I took money [...]
Mostly I’m sick to my stomach reading that so many people “love” this book. Did I miss something? A whiny putz writes in a style I would expect from a precocious high school student about things that couldn’t possibly have happened while using gross-out details fit mostly for intellectually lazy frat boys… and people love this book? Intelligent writers love this book? Progressives love this book? Feminists love this book?
The whole thing leaves me more than a little disgusted by people who should know better, but who lapped up this garbage peddled by the corporate publishing industry to pander to the intellectually-lite masses.