I would imagine there have been other threads about this guy(I didn’t find 'em, but I probably didn’t search correctly)so forgive me if I’m being redundant. I know the basics of the whole debacle; author writes a memoir recounting the trials and tribulations of his life of drug dependency blah blah blah, Oprah recommends it with glowing reviews blah blah blah and it turns out that he made a lot of the stuff up. My question is, why is it such a source of moral pain and outrage? Is it mostly about Oprah’s reputation? Is it outright illegal to misrepresent a work of fiction as fact? Is there some detail/s that perhaps I haven’t heard about that would clarify what all the fuss is about? I honestly don’t get why so many people’s panties are in a wad. Yeah, the guy is kind of a tool for getting caught, but if the book was well written, entertaining, inspiring or whatever, what’s the big deal?
If any of you are particularly upset about this event, please know I’m not trying to be insulting. I just really really feel in the dark about how big a deal is being made of this.
A few points - knowing that I, too, have not read the book.
it was presented as a true and very harrowing path towards redemption. The truth of it was part of the deal - if you accept this as true and he could go through it, so you could. Reading it with a “novel” mindset could result in a very different reaction from readers, especially those who identified with the writer.
he agreed to go on Oprah, knowing she would “Oprah-fy” it - i.e., present it as part of her ongoing “you can improve your life and find an inner peace you’ve never had before” efforts. Clearly, this requires the person, their story, to be true, or everything falls apart. Her physical fitness guru can’t turn out to be a bulimic who keeps his/her weight down by purging while advocating diet and exercise, right?
to my knowledge, Frey has - well before this whole brouhaha on Oprah - come across as obnoxious and arrogant. I don’t have a specific cite, but seem to recall that he had a very puffed up view of himself and the book. If this is right - and I am not sure it is - then there is the “oh, how the mighty have fallen” factor - people love it when a bastard gets their comeuppance…
Wordman has it right. It touched a lot of people who have been through similar problems or know people who do. It wasn’t just a book to them. Now it feels like betrayal.
Of course if there was no Oprah then the book would have been read by about 10,000 people and none of this would have come up.
Libels the Hazelden clinic by claiming severe mistreatment, including dental procedures done without anesthesia.
Libeled cops in Ohio, claiming they beat him during a DUI arrest.
Advocates a “just (don’t) do it” method of getting clean from years of heavy drug use and dismisses treatment facilities, when that wasn’t his experience.
Lies about how a teenage girl died, inserting himself into her story as one of her dear friends and as being involved in the accident that killed her; the family of the girl denied that she knew him well at all or that it happened that way.
Reporters can get fired for doing what he did, so I expect at least the who/what/where/when of an autobiography to at least bear a decent resemblance to the truth; the “why” is very subjective, naturally. He claims the drugs as one reason why he “misremembered” some of the events, but apparently recounts full conversations and detailed memories in his book. According to the research done on The Smoking Gun (well, according to my quick re-read of their analysis), the only jail time they turned up was a few hours waiting for a friend to post bail.
He admits to shopping the book around for a long time, unsuccessfully, as fiction before getting it sold as autobiography. To me, that suggests that publishers, at least, didn’t find it interesting as fiction but as a true inspirational story, however, they thought it was worthwhile. After all, it was a story about this guy with a huge rap sheet (not huge at all it turns out) who was a teen gone bad, a violent criminal and hardcore drug addict. Sounds much better than “Midwestern boy from a well-off family was popular in high school, got hooked on a little drugs and paid a couple fines for DUIs, went to a pricey, respected drug rehab center, and decides to write a book.”
Ah, I ask and I receive. Your replies do shed quite a bit of light on it, especially the damage to the specific parties that Ferret Herder cites. As far as people feeling betrayed because now that they’ve found out this individual didn’t overcome insurmountable circumstances, they’ve lost faith that they themselves can do the same , I say that’s crrrrrrrap. I’m not disputing that some people are taking that stance, Loach and WordMan, I’m talking more about people taking responsibility for their own recoveries, which I will reserve further coment on for Great Debates. Thanks for answering my questions, though
Another problem is that he embellished his “badassedness,” something that addicts do as a way of justifying their behavior. The fact that he’s still trying to justify himself indicates that he’s really not recovering, just waiting.
This does not absolve him from presenting false information, but there appear to be “claims” of a historical trail in which the manuscript was submitted as non-fiction, then fiction, and then as a memoir. It is not clear how valid these claims are, but no publisher has stepped up to defend themselves and further hang Frey, so I accept them as likely.
I personally wonder how much the publisher knew/influenced these changes and if a manuscript submitted as a novel was somehow tweaked into a “memoir.” As I said, it does not absolve Frey, who could have walked away at any time.
Remember that several years ago there was a controversy over the 1992 Nobel Prize-winning autobiography I, Rigoberta Menchu, which turned out to have been heavily fabricated.
In the book, Menchu joins the guerillas that oppose the millitary, but:
She used claims that weren’t true to speak the voice of a people whose oppression she contributed to as a guerilla, drowning out their actual voices. She got busted, and she didn’t have to give her Nobel Prize back.
This has to be an Oprah issue. I had never heard of James Frey until the smokinggun outed him as a liar.
Who is he? Was he famous in some realm that I don’t follow? Is he a literary figure prior to this autobiography?
I have tried to ignore the story as much as possible, because like Jon Stewart said it is troublesome that we get upset about this but not other more pressing issues.
Well, while all the untruths cited here are pretty much accurate, really his (or the publisher) misrepresenting the book isn’t the cause for all the racket.
In my view it’s all about Oprah. I watched the show where he reappeared on her show to face the music and she came off eally bad in th process. She was basically raking him over the coals. She came across as self-righteous and self-important to a embarassing degree. The fact that he’s been labeled as “the man who duped Oprah” is what’s making this a story. So many people have an irrational relatonship with Oprah that this undercuts their very fiber of being. It’s not possible that Oprah misled them! She turned this into a massive spectacle in order to absolve herself from criticism. 98% of similar cases (and you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think half of all “memoirs” have the same exaggerations and lies) would barely be a blip on the media radar.
Oprah made this into a media spectacle, making her more money, getting her more coverage, and insulating herself from critique. James Frey is a tool, but so is anyone who takes a “memoir” of some nobody as a validation and crutch to overcome their problems.
I think Ferret Herder summed it up pretty well. Frey is full of shit, and people lauded him and his book because it was a true story. It wasn’t, and the bits on The Smoking Gun make me wonder why people fell for such bad literature.
Now I see where you got the name Omniscient This has very much been my take on it. I just wanted to get more details and see if anyone agrees. I saw a very small portion of his reappearance on her show, and while I think he already looked like a jackass, she came off a shrill bitch.
Why would Mr. Frey agree to go on the Oprah Show and get dismantled like that? A sweet contract? Surely the ratings were pretty good…quid pro quo anyone?
The part of that interview that I found the most grating was when Oprah theatrically asked him if the Lily character really hung herself. He said no, and explained he changed it from her having slit her wrists to protect her identity and her family. Oprah proceded to cut him off and say “no, you lied!” looking agast as if he was somehow exploiting her suicide by changing it to a hanging versus slit wrists. Of course the audience followed her lead. :rolleyes:
I’m sure book sales spiked as a result. Any publicity is good publicity. One thing that I noticed was that if Frey had even the slightest bit of savvy and smarts (he’s not a very sharp tack) he’d have killed Oprah on redirect. He could have diffused it immediately but saying he compressed timelines and added drama for the sake of readabiliity but the message and spirit of the book holds. Had he been the least bit political Oprah would have looked like an ass and the show would have been a dud for her. Perhaps he thought he could manage that…and simply wasn’t bright enough to do so.
His first book (the one in question) was a well received but little read book. I think it was out for a year or more. I’m not an expert on the book business but it seems to have done about normal business for a book of this type. Then out of the blue Oprah puts it in her book club. The book immediately shot to the top of the charts and stayed there for a while.
So to answer your question yes he was famous before the smoking gun. Oprah made him a phenomenon. And rich. As of the week the story broke his newest book was number 1 on the charts (Entertainment Weekly). Not sure where it is this week.
There’s an article in the NY Times discussing the fact that his sales have dropped off a cliff - still relatively strong overall, but a fraction of what they had been. Again, he still is no doubt crying - all the way to the bank.
The main thrust to the article is about the new 3-page Author’s Note in the latest edition of the book. He basically says he made stuff up to serve the story, that things like getting dental procedures done without anesthetic was denied by the people in question and he (Frey) might’ve mis-remembered and that all that stuff about him being a badass? Okay, not so true…
All in all - he sounds like a petulant kid who is not over his problems, who wrote a brash, fantastic portrayal of boring-in-real-life events who got caught up in forces much bigger than he foresaw. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind…
