Million Little Pieces --> Million Dog Pile-On

[Cat_Fight]

@koeeoaddi

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.

This was actually mentioned by Oprah and now that I’ve reflected a little, it was quite necessary for her to stress the importance of labelling truth or fiction as such before covering a memoir about a tragedy (the Holocaust) that is still being denied. But yes, it is a little weird that all these people will soon be reading Night solely because Lord Oprah told them to, but as I think it is an important and beautiful book everyone should read whether on their own or as part of the school curriculum, it’s hard to find fault.

[Banger]

@myskepticsight

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.

Out of necessity? No writer needs to sell a book to a major publisher. Besides, he’s probably living high on the hog off of that Kissing a Fool money

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.

The difference is that he lied, made a lot of money off of the lie, got caught, and then the BAM happened.

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.”

Actually, I think “mostly BS” would be more accurate. Again, to say that the only way his book would come out was if it were a memoir is incorrect. There are plenty of vanity publishers out there who would have been happy to put it out for him.

This is an interesting article from Time Magazine discussing the difference between a memoir and a novel:

But that just raises the question, If it’s not factual, why didn’t Frey publish A Million Little Pieces as fiction? By claiming that his story is literally true, Frey endows it with a heightened immediacy and an emotional force that it would have lacked as a novel. In effect, he borrowed a little extra emotional oomph from his trusting readers, who treated his book as lived experience, a receipt for real dues paid by a real person.

Basically, he cheated. People read memoirs instead of novels for a reason: because they’re based on the truth, even if embellished in parts. The reason why it sold as a memoir and not a novel is because even the most embellished memoir is constrained by a connection to the factual truth, whereas a novel need not be. As such, a memoir’s story needs to meet a lower standard of quality in the story, as whatever deficiencies the story may have are made up for in its truthfulness, which, as Grossman says, gives it a heightened immediacy and an emotional force lacking in a novel.

Furthermore, people who read stories of recovery often do so because they are struggling with similar issues. If a person reads the book and believes that someone can go through what Frey said he did and still recover, then maybe they too can recover. But if they then learn that the book was a lie, what does it say about that underlying truth they thought they had discovered? Maybe one cannot go through all of that and recover. To make it even worse, from this bizarre (and false) position of authority that Frey creates in his “memoir,” he claims that he had no need for 12-step programs in his recovery. A person reading this book who may be inspired by Frey’s recovery may also be inspired to not bother with 12-step programs when such programs may be helpful to that person.

[phungi]

It will be interesting to see if the same type of investigative interest extends to a book like Scar Tissue, which is the autobiography of Anthony Kiedis, the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I just finished it, and while it was a quick and interesting read, he spent most of his time on speed and heroin benders, avoided rehab, and told lots of stories about other people in his book. As while reading AMLP, I thought “this can’t all be true”… I guess there is little likelihood that Oprah will endorse this one, so he appears safe.