Regarding this, the NYTimes article on this said her company received a call from a Hazelden counselor after Frey appeared on her show. The counselor said much of Frey’s story was untrue. According to the article, Oprah called Talese and was assured that the book had been checked out as accurate. Now the publisher is saying all they checked was that no one was libeled in the book, and that they don’t normally verify the factual accuracy of books they publish.
I agree with Oprah. She’s done lots of good things, but she’s extremely self-important. However, she has a right to protect her image, and she took it like the honest person I believe her to be.
Re: the author’s “crime”. Hey…it’s a memoir as opposed to an autobiography. That means (as I understand it) you have some wiggle room in the embellishment department. Who’s to say where to draw the line between embellishment and a flat-out lie? Each person has their own cutoff line in that department.
It wasn’t criminal…maybe his audience is confused on what it was they were actually reading. He was going for emotional effect and he achieved his goal. So it wasn’t truthful to the extent some people imagined it to be. I don’t feel sorry for him at all, because that’s the chance you take when you take those liberties. Oprah did the right thing. But I certainly don’t think the author is a monster.
Bookseller checking in. The book has been selling like crazy since the Larry King Show. The attitude is “I don’t care what they’re saying…” or “I want to see what all this is about.” I wonder if the book will get another curiosity lift from the show, or just die.
I’d be happy to write the whole thing off as another chapter in the Human Comedy™, if it weren’t for the fact that the next book in the Oprah stable is Night by Elie Wiesel. Hardly anything offends me in the bookworld, but seeing a shelf display of Oprah books with Night sandwiched in with stacks of A Million Little Pieces actually made me a slightly ill.
Porterhouse doesn’t exist!
Hasn’t anyone thought about poor, poor Porterhouse?!? 
The whole thing bothers me on a few different levels. Frey has been irresponsible throughout, claiming that all of that wild shit was completely true. But, ultimately, it’s Oprah who has done the most damage. She’s the one who made a hero out of Frey by putting him on her show and taking his book to number one on the bestseller list.
It would have been one thing if she said, “Here’s a fascinating book by a great writer…” but as always she had to take it to the extreme and act like Frey is the ultimate recovery guru. He’s arrogant, but I don’t remember him ever acting like he has it all figured out. His experience is just that, it’s his, and it should have never been touted as anything more. The fact that impressionable people are reading the book and trying to model their own recoveries after it is unsettling. But, I have to think that if they are that easily swayed they are going to have problems regardless of the path they take with their recovery.
I read the book, and the whole time I sat there and thought that it seemed very exaggerated. There were parts of it that rang true, but for the most part it read like a tall tale. It’s unfortunate that a lot of Oprah’s fans lack objectivity when it comes to anything that she recommends.
What did you think of Frey in terms of his skill as a writer? I was very surprised to hear Gay Talese (who disagrees with his wife’s stance regarding the book) state that he thought Frey was a very good writer, yet I’ve seen his ability widely disparaged here.
Jeez Louise, Ophra’s a TALK SHOW HOST. I’ve never heard of her taking a degree in literature or anything else. If people want to buy this book, good for them. Ophra has catapulted this book’s sales (directly or otherwise) immensely.
Makes me wonder if she has a finger in the pie.
/end cynicysm/
I read the book, and like Indygrrl I thought it read as a very tall tale in places. Overall, I liked it, could not put it down, and also read his sequel. The lack of punctuation took a few pages to get used to, but I liked it.
To say he has no talent is simply ridiculous, but to say you don’t like it is purely subjective, and I can see where people would not enjoy the writing style.
I’m sure many people would disagree on the writing style of Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, although I am certainly not saying Frey is comparable.
I guess the bottom line in all this is that memoir is the new glurge.
And that’s kind of odd to me, considering that glurge never really took off in its own right.
BTW, Art Vandelay, Architect: it was chicken pox. 
Thanks, phungi. I suspected he had considerable talent. I hope he can overcome this and have a successful career.
P.S.: I know what you mean about style and punctuation as a potential problem. I picked up a couple of Elmore Leonard books a few months back, read four pages of the first one and returned them for a refund. 
This is actually pretty common. I have a friend, published writer, bestseller, whose first stories were rejected as fiction until an editor suggested they call them “memoirs.” Kind of a conspiracy between the editor and the author. It worked. Like I said, bestseller.
I think he’s definitely a good writer. I read the book in one evening because I couldn’t put it down. Granted, I did think it was a true-ish story at the time and that probably made it more compelling. He does a great job with description and imagery, and despite his lies there are parts of it that ring really true. I think he understands a lot about addiction and addictive behavior, even if the experiences weren’t entirely his.
Thanks, Indygrrl. I’ve developed quite an interest in writers and in writing itself over the last few years. I think I may pick up a copy just to experience it as a work of art.
Thanks again,
SA
I posted the link because earlier in the thread people were saying that Frey submitted it to the publisher as a novel and the publisher told him that they were going to publish it as a memoir. The article I linked to indicates that he couldn’t sell it as a novel, so he tried to sell it as a memoir and got a taker. In this case, it was a conspiracy between the author and his agent. In the former scenario, the publisher was guilty of coercion, whereas in the latter, it was guilty of willful ignorance.
She has a degree in Speech and Performing Arts for Tennessee State University. A liberal arts degree like that would have likely involved some literary criticism and deconstruction (and given what is generally known about Oprah, it is likely she took some Lit coursework).
Someone sent me this link – this Rutten guy boils it down nicely and smacks everyone involved.
I haven’t read the book, but the impression I get (from the excerpts quoted in the Smoking Gun article) is that you shall be sorely disappointed.
My local Barnes and Noble has A Million Little Pieces under fiction now.
Of course, that’s because I moved every copy I could find over there.
I’m not sure how I feel about all this hooplah…I read the book on Christmas day (my mother had a copy and had told me to read it when I was home on break, and I happened to find it on Christmas because I was sitting in her ‘reading chair’) and I could NOT put it down. After I opened my presents I just sat reading until my mom yelled at me to get ready. I read in the car on the way to my aunt’s house and on the way back, drunk and using my cell phone as a booklamp. I read the sequel in one sitting the next day. I enjoyed both books very much.
If in fact Frey tried to get his book published as a novel and ended up going the memoir route instead out of necessity, then he should just say it and this can all be over and people can leave the poor guy alone. Yes, he lied about things but I might do the same thing if one second people were prasing my book then BAM everyone hates me. And possibly he felt he had to lie because the only way his book would come out if he said it was a memoir - so he couldn’t go on TV and be like “Oh yeah this book is actually part BS, but I just wanted my book published so I had to call it a memoir.”
I don’t give a crap if his books are 100% true or not. I’d still dig it just as much if it were complete fiction. I normally gravitate towards novels about messed up people (ones in involved in booze, drugs, crime, etc) and this one was to me just another book about a messed up person.
So if it was a publishing dilemma, it should come out and everyone involved should aplogize and get this over with. Frey has to be feeling like a jackass now, and I sure wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. He wrote two enjoyable novels that people are reading - and I can’t see how everyone who liked the book would just trash it now because it’s not 100% true. It’s GOOD that no one lived that.
Yes, I know you may be right. However, two posters here said they couldn’t put it down and Gay Talese, a writer I respect, has spoken very highly of Frey’s abillity as a writer so I guess I’ll go against what would otherwise be my better judgement and see how I like it.