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January 17, 2006
Frey: Why Society Got Freyed.
It is not shocking that James Frey would agree to market A Million Little Pieces, his story about defeating drugs, as a memoir rather than a novel. He was a writer who wanted to be published and his story as 'novel' was rejected by 17 publishers. Neither should it be a surprise that publishers Doubleday came up with the scheme of marketing novel as memoir. Publishers after all need to sell thier product as best as they can. Truth then is dismissible at the alter of profit, ambition, fallibility and this litery con is merely an extension of the morally grey times we live in.
Few seem bothered by the distinctions between fact and fiction, exaggeration and misrepresentation, between forgetting and forgiving, lies and white-lies. There's a war being fought in Iraq. Water is labelled sugar-fat-cholestrol free. Oprah contends all is good for the sake of good and, if the source is falsehood, so what? At my Barnes and Nobles book club only one out of seven was upset by being Freyed, two said they never took memoirs literally anyway and the remaining four shrugged 'no matter, it was a good read.'
Whose Fault is Frey? asks John Dolan of eXile.
In a review I published in May 29, 2003, I started off by saying that AMLP was "the worst thing I've ever read" and went on to say that Frey was a phony, his characters recycled Hollywood types, his female lead, "Lilly," wholly invented and his story downright silly. Now that Frey's been caught, I'm getting lots of emails praising me for seeing through Frey. But it was easy. The real question is, why couldn't the rest of the literate public see it?
The New York Times' Michiko Kakatuni weighs in with what truth means in and for our current culture.
They also coincided with our culture's enshrinement of subjectivity - "moi" as a modus operandi for processing the world. Cable news is now peopled with commentators who serve up opinion and interpretation instead of news, just as the Internet is awash in bloggers who trade in gossip and speculation instead of fact. For many of these people, it's not about being accurate or fair. It's about being entertaining, snarky or provocative - something that's decidedly easier and less time-consuming to do than old fashioned investigative reporting or hard-nosed research.
Posted by Soniah Kamal at January 17, 2006 09:09 AM
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Posted by: Anonymous at January 17, 2006 09:09 AM
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