Freyday

I started writing a post about James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces several weeks ago (January 4, according to Blogger), before this whole nasty controversy blew up, but I was too busy to finish it. Here is the opening sentence from that draft:

"Now, this is a story about literacy in America, literacy in my family, the cult of celebrity and some very Hipster-like behavior on my part (shunning something once it has been accepted into mainstream culture)."

It was going to be a post about the night I found myself on the Q Train reading AMLP, sitting directly across from another woman reading AMLP. Although I was grateful that my copy did not have the "Oprah's Book Club Selection" logo, I still felt pretty goddamn stupid reading a book that had already become so pedestrian and cliche. [In case you are interested, the back story about literacy in my family concerns how it is that I came to be holding a copy of that book in the first place- who knows maybe I'll work the whole thing up into an essay some day]. But then Frey went and got himself called out as a liar, so now I've got to scrap this post and talk about that. Nice going, James.

At brunch with LaHipster and some of her friends two Sundays ago, I announced, "I read the book. I thought it was good and I don't care that he lied." The girl sitting next to me, who seems like someone whose opinion I would value said, "I read the book too. I hated the book and I hate that he lied." Okay, so it seems like we have a jumping off point here.

With time, I’ve had the chance to reflect and get some more details. At this point, the mystery is not, “Did Frey lie?”; we know that he did. The mystery is not, “Why did he lie?”; he has said he lied to make himself sound cooler and tougher. Fair enough. For a while, I thought they mystery was, “How the hell did he think he would not get caught?”. Then I thought about Frey scribbling out his addiction memoir, which according to this interview was 550 single spaced pages and a mess, and I thought, well, who knew this thing would get picked up? Who knew that in the post 9/11 world (see interview) someone would want to read a vaguely cohesive memoir of a busted up crackhead? And who could have predicted that Oprah would give this book her papal blessing, thereby opening it up for intense media scrutiny?

I think now the mystery is not “Why did Frey think he wouldn’t get caught” but rather, “Why did Frey get caught?”. Someone started digging- the people from SmokingGun.com as I understand it- and out the truth came, but why dig in the first place? Are these same people out there right now, combing through Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, trying to track down hospital records? Was there something inherently implausible in Frey’s story? Call me naïve, but when crack is involved, I’ll tend to believe anything. Was it the subject matter that made Frey vulnerable? Are people not ready to believe a crack addict can recover without The Twelve Steps and therefore sought to destroy his credibility? God, is the addiction and recovery movement that political?? Or, does this guy come off as an asshole? I must admit, I’ve only read the Oprah transcripts, I’ve never seen this guy on film. Is he the kind of person whose success you want to quash? Or are we as a culture so envious and fatigued of seeing a supposed wunderkind rise to the top of the Bestseller list, that we’re all clamoring to prove he’s a fraud? I suppose any one of these questions might have led someone to start trying to verify the accuracy of Frey’s memoir, but, just because you have the power to destroy some careers, does that mean you should? Did anyone call Frey and say, look, we know you lied and we’ve got the proof- either confess for yourself or we’ll out you, or was an itchy trigger-finger already reaching to speed dial the major news outlets?

And now we come to the question: was it wrong to lie? And, Timmy’s gonna slay me here about “gray” morals, but I say: it depends. Are you lying to obscure the identity of people in your book? Are you lying to protect people you care about from hurtful truths? Are you lying to tell a better story? And if you are lying for any of these reasons, does that mean your work must be classified as fiction? At what point does an exaggeration become a lie? Is there room in Memoirs for exaggeration or are we looking for the God’s honest truth and nothing but the truth?

This is what is troubling for me. Every good storyteller has been tempted to exaggerate to tell a more compelling story. In fact, we as Americans have made a genre out of it, the “Tall Tales” you learn about in school; I still remember learning the word “hyperbole” in the fourth grade. Have you ever sat down to tell a story and said, ‘I’ve got a good story, but if I tweak it here and change this line, it would be a great story’? And I’m not strictly talking about the page here- think about the last great story you told over brunch, or Thanksgiving Dinner, or at a job interview: where you 100% honest? The truth is storytellers, whether they call themselves writers or not, exaggerate. You’ve done it, or, if you haven’t, please don’t stand next to me at a cocktail party; I’ve done it, hell, I’ve probably even done it in this very blog, although nothing comes to mind right now.

I guess the question is, do you want to hear the truth or do you want to hear a compelling story? I’d pick the great story every time- but writers, please, let’s not be stupid about it. Add an author’s note, a disclaimer, hell, slap the words “A Novel” under the title, I don’t care. When did we get this idea that the only writers worth respecting were journalists, biographers and historians? It used to be that the storyteller was the most popular dude in the village, today these same people often toil in isolation, obscurity and relative poverty. Let’s once again validate the role of the storyteller and let’s get on with our damn lives. Now, did I ever tell you about that time I spent three months in jail?