With the cascading accusations swirling around James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces", I thought I'd drop in my two cents from dreary little Oklahoma. As writers know, artistic license must be a part of any endeavor of a work of art. Lies must occur because the mundaneness of real life is just not that exciting.
With a memoir, at least for me, the story becomes secondary. With this type of piece, especially with the drinking and pills and how they were brought down with a hammer in the amounts of consumption, Frey was doing something extraordinary. For this, I'd like you to consider Hemingway.
While he is considered a great writer in academia and in literary history, I find that his stories are at best average. And while I may offend a lot of people that genuflect at his altar, his stories are not what we fell in love with. He was a rugged, masculine author for his time, lived a life, all true or not, that most men wish they had the courage to live. And he made damn sure people knew about it. How many photos can you recall of him standing over a fresh kill he made in Africa? He was always building a larger than life myth of himself. Frey in modern day was trying to build a literary legend of himself, though the rehab and redemption makes me take some of this back.
Another example was "On the Road" by Kerouac. Although it was a fictional piece, he still received a legendary position in the literary hierarchy for his way of life. Most believed he lived all of it, though those who knew him said pool hall scenes with Neal Cassidy were just that, shooting pool and drinking beer.
Jack London never led huskies into a snowy wilderness. Read some biographies. Those who knew him said London spent most of his time in bars listening to men that lived it everyday. But he benefited from the myths that came upon him through his fiction. We picture him as the testosterone driven male, outdoorsman, drunk, liquored up author (which was true) that we all think he was. And you can't fault Frey for wanting some of this.
I know my critics will say, yes, but these are all examples of fiction. Here's the zinger.
Let's go to "Walden" by Thoreau (who, by the way, I love). Although he's been crowned the hippie god of naturalism and self-sufficiency, he was no Robinson Crusoe. We all picture him living in a vast, isolated forest wilderness. But the fact is he lived less than a mile away from town and would go daily into Concord to Mom and Emerson's house for good eats and better shelter. Thoreau would shrink under the spotlight of truth.
Are all the professional "handwringers" ready to throw Thoreau as well as "Walden", a "non-fiction" masterpiece, on the fire coals of their righteous indignation along with Frey?
Or how about the "impressionist" painters? After all, they didn't give us the exact replicas of their landscapes. In a sense, they are liars as well. Monet and Van Gogh be damned…
Or how about an actor, say, Rock Hudson? A man who played heterosexual men on screen, benefiting from this lie both with fame and monetarily? According to these standards, he should give his money back. Hell, let's pull his gay corpse from the earth and slap a lawsuit on him.
And now we arrive at Oprah, who's fast approaching canonization. She should be the last person leading the crucifixation of Frey. She misrepresents herself everyday, manipulating bored, ignorant, lonely housewives into believing that she is their friend, just one of the girls. And through that belief, she gets them to buy merchandise and contribute to charities that she gets a kick back from. According to Slate magazine this year she "donated" 51.8 million dollars to nowhere outside the Oprah umbrella. The list includes the Oprah Foundation, Oprahs' Angel Network and the Oprah Operating Foundation. Quite Machiavellian, don't you think? Should I go on about her? Nah, she's too easy.
I'm adult enough to know somewhat of what Frey was thinking. Should I stay a janitor all of my life or take the fifty thousand dollar advance for writing a fictional memoir? What would you do?
I honestly don't care if he lied. It's a damn good book. I know he created a lot of envious energy in New York among the literary elites, which is probably the source of the flogging he's receiving now. But those cold, concrete W.A.S.P.s needed a fire under them as well as an example. The lesson for today is no one wants to read boring shit. The world is full of boring books written by boring authors that have received accolades from well-connected peers. It was time for a man like Frey to set the house on fire.
And the Oprah viewers just need to grow up into adults. Shocked and dumbfounded at such lies, I wonder what type of "Pleasantville" town they live in. No children need not apply; at least in the real world or in this instance, the naked ambition of an author.
Leave Frey alone, he's only trying to build a myth, which is secretly how any writer worth his weight would like to be remembered.
