James Frey - New Memoir Also Fiction

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Let’s start the debate over again:

http://www.thebookstandard.com/bookstandard/news/author/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002501822

Author James Frey has admitted that significant portions of My Friend Leonard—the 2005 follow-up to his 2003 not-quite-a-memoir A Million Little Pieces—are fabricated, the AP reported today.

…

Leonard begins with the author meeting a character named Porterhouse during that jail term.

“I did not spend ninety days in jail, and Porterhouse is a fictional character,” Frey writes. “Many of the other characters’ names and identifying characteristics have been altered or fictionalized, as have major events in their lives.”

Will he be kicked out of Harvard for this? Oops, wrong fabricator.

[Marley23]

And who has been appearing as Frey in public? Oh, wrong pseudo-author.

I didn’t realize there was anything to admit here. When The Smoking Gun debunked his other bu[del]llshit[/del]k, they said he was never in jail. Since some of the action in Leonard involved him being in jail I assumed that meant both novels were in the crapper.

Frey spends hours each day in his cell reading to Porterhouse, an illiterate inmate facing trial for two homicides (he is said to have pushed his girlfriend out a window after finding her in bed with another man, whom Porterhouse then tortures before dispatching him with a bullet to the heart). The Frey-Porterhouse Book Club gets through “Don Quixote,” “Leaves of Grass,” and “East of Eden.” And, as Frey is nearing release, the pair is reading “War and Peace.” Porterhouse loves the book, crying when Anatole betrayed Natasha. He carries it around with him, Frey writes, and “cradles it as if it were his child.”
[…]
When we asked Frey if he actually was assaulted by Porterhouse, he said, “Uh, something along those lines happened, yes.” Was it done at the direction of law enforcement officers in retaliation for him supposedly tangling with Granville cops? “I don’t know that, man,” he said. And despite all that quality time spent with Porterhouse on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Frey could not recall the inmate’s actual first or last name. [my italics]

Given the revelations surrounding OprahGate, who could be shocked that this Shawshank bullshit didn’t really happen?

[Snooooopy]

If he were my waiter, I wonder if he’d be able to write down my order correctly or if he’d invent a more interesting entree.

[AuntiePam]

A woman in my book group has read Million Little Pieces and Leonard. She says she doesn’t care if he made it up. “It could have happened, to somebody.” :dubious:

[Marley23]

And that someone? It’s Walter Mitty.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

It has been suggested that Thurber got the idea for Mitty from a book by a leading British crime-fiction writer, Anthony Berkeley Cox, writing as Francis Isles.

Somebody who has an account at Wikipedia should correct that to Francis Iles.

[choie]

@AuntiePam

A woman in my book group has read Million Little Pieces and Leonard. She says she doesn’t care if he made it up. “It could have happened, to somebody.” :dubious:

Why the dubious smilie? People have been reading things that “could have happened, to somebody” for millennia. Fiction is kind of a popular genre.

At this point in the guy’s career, I’m not really sure why all this matters so much. With his first book, he was shilling it as a true story and flat-out lied in order to sell his stuff. That was embarrassing for him and those who supported him.

But now that people presumably know that Frey is a virtual Paul Bunyan, he’s kinda in the clear as far as I’m concerned. I think creating a puzzle for one’s audience – “is it real? could this really have happened?” – is a perfectly valid form of storytelling. As long as the memoir isn’t supposed to be a history book, and it’s written for enjoyment, not education.

We accept this kind of truth/fiction bleeding in films all the time. Blair Witch Project, numerous TV “docudramas” … Hell, the Coen brothers blatently told their audience that Fargo was a true story (not even “based on,” but “true”), and we ate it up with a spoon. The film deservedly won popular success, critical praise and Academy Awards. Even now, people still get confused by that so-called disclaimer.

The invisible line between truth/fiction often adds an extra curiosity factor to entertainment, and as long as people enjoy it and it’s not trying to be anything more than entertainment, I don’t see what harm there is.

[phungi]

if I recall, My Friend Leonard was published as fiction… no surprise, no big deal…

fwiw, I liked both books, and would read another that he wrote, if for no other reason than to support the guy… he has been well vilified.

[AuntiePam]

@choie

Why the dubious smilie? People have been reading things that “could have happened, to somebody” for millennia. Fiction is kind of a popular genre.

Good point. She praised it as inspirational (which I didn’t mention earlier). Hence the dubious smilie.