James Frey and his 999,998 pieces of things you can believe in.

I would like it stated that, although I have read about the lyrics of My Hump, or is it My Humps? See, look how uninterested I am. I would like it noted that I have no idea how one would hum that song. I have no idea what the words are. I have heard it twice and each time I have been able to shut it out of my mind. It does not make it's way into my psyche.

The only explanation for this is: I am a Jedi Knight, because there is no way to resist the "unfiltered evil as we are likely to see in this world" that is My Humps. The Force is strong with me.

The James Frey thing has also been on my mind lately. Last week we had a Girls Night In (as we often do when a spouse is out of town)(Thank Fucking God), and we watched James on Larry King all together because we were all interested and/or touched by the book.

Two of us hadn't read the book but were interested. Two more of us had read the book and were interested because the story touched us. Then there was me, who was interested because the story touched me but also because I couldn't help thinking, "Wow, this was published and Oprah picked it?" because a lot of the writing struck me as something a whole lot of bloggers could write.

He wrote like I write when I'm trying to convey how things feel.

After listening to Mr Frey on Larry King and doing some reading about the issue, we all seemed to come to the same conclusion: the story was still compelling in it's own rite, even without the extra, what? 20 pages which are now up for debate.

I left after our night in believing that. But something still didn't sit right with me. So I kept reading because on the one hand, does reading other people's opinions create your opinion? Or, does reading lots of opinions give you the information you need? I'm not sure.

However, I read one piece on Slate, about James Frey and "Why his fakery matters".

After I read this piece I realized how sad I was for James. The idea that James Frey couldn't admit to himself he was a victim, a victim who was not so tough. He was a child of a western Michigan town who could not find his way in spite of a relatively good upbringing. He was a victim of nothing but himself. He was not the hard core drug addict who punched policemen. He was the polite boy who was arrested for drunk driving, and who could not control his addiction.

Why did he go so much further than what you'd expect from a boy from a good small town family?

That's the story I would have liked to hear. That's the story I'm not sure publisher's were willing to tell. What upsets me about this story is that I really don't believe the story would have changed that much without the "lies" James Frey told to make the story more interesting. Would that story have been published though?

I've joked often, I wish I had a past drug problem. Like a woman I know through the internet got an agent and actually had a story to tell in book form (Imagine that! A book!) did.

If I were to write a book it would be a memoir, and that memoir would be about my life. I'd like to say I wouldn't embellish the unpleasant things which happened to me, but I also know how much I would like to have a book published with my name on the cover. I can understand the desperation which might come with spending all that fucking time writing a fiction book, and being told it can't be sold. But if it was a memoir. A memoir to fill the bottomless bucket which is the public's need for 'reality'.

Never mind that Reality TV is anything but reality, it's a story which is told to fit into what people can relate to. I'm not even knocking that but let's call it what it is. It's a story which is told to fit into a model of dramatic television we've always been exposed to. Life doesn't generally work that way. Life isn't linear.

A few years ago I spent some time in a hospital on the mental health ward, I haven't talked about it but that's because it's awkward for people who love me to talk about. I had a book on my nightstand before I ended up in the hospital, it was called 'The Liar's Club' by Mary Karr. I do not remember how that book ended up in my hands but the irony could not be more dramatic if I was James Frey trying to create drama from real life.

So today I read a piece in the Christian Science Monitor about this whole issue, I was especially happy to hear Mary Karr check in on the topic.

But first, because Logan said as I was writing this post, "Maybe you need to see it from both sides."

I think I do. I know that if I one day write a book thing will be mostly true. I will write about the events of my life as honestly as I am capable of. Will it sell? I'm not sure and that's why I haven't written about the bad things that happened in that house I grew up in. 

I will write about the events as I experienced them. I do not think I will create things that never happened. I do not believe I will tell untruths to sell my story, but frankly I may tell things as Melissa and not as a journalist or biographer. I will tell my stories from the point of view of a 6, 8, 15 year old Melissa who lived those stories. Will my 'Essential Truth' come into question as I write my experiences? I don't know.

In that Christian Science Monitor article Lili Wright wrote, "You're taking the highlights of your life. It's a work of art, it's selective, it's subject to memory. A memoir is art, it's literature. It's not journalism, it's not a documentary."

However, with all my empathy and belief in James Frey's 'Essential Truth', the quote from Mary Karr speaks to me most clearly.

"My experience is there's no way you can manufacture events and find the truth," Ms. Karr says. "Great memoirs don't take bizarre experiences and make them more bizarre and outrageous. They take bizarre experiences and make them familiar. That's the power."

I hope to one day take the bizarre experiences of my life and make them familiar. I love that people relate to me and what I write here. I think even the ugly things I haven't talked about here, I think I can make those things relate to a lot of people.

Comments

[PhC]

Love Mary Karr.

Her other books are good as well...

[coolbeans]

This makes me want to hug you til all the bad stuff comes out.

The ugly stuff is what I think I'm supposed to write about, but can't or won't. Until I can or will or even don't need to anymore - the rest is top layer or just below. It doesn't show what I've climbed over and clawed my way through to get to this surface. Though I haven't read Mr. Frey's book, I think that might be why it troubles people.

I can understand embellishing the bad to make it worse because the truth is something you've faced or are dealing with and you look at other people and think, "They have it so much worse. Aren't my problems smaller by comparison?" and maybe believe that the truth isn't bad enough unless you make it worse yet. Instead of just saying, "This was bad. It was hard for me. This is my truth."

[mom on a wire]

I would buy your book. And I think I would love it.

[Meghan]

I would TOTALLY buy that book. I'm de-lurking (god I hate that term) to tell you that your writing is amazing, and yours is my absolute favorite site to read. I can't wait until the day it's out in hardcover.

[lyn]

I'd definitely read a book written by you.

[Rocky]

Well put. I think if we were to "investigate' some of the classic memoirs of authors past, we'd find some questionable points to ponder as well. The last time I remember an artist being this thoroughly eviscerated was the Milli Vanilli "scandal" of the 90's. In my opinion, America doesn't seem to want a hero from the bourgeois or upper-class America.

Now, if James had been brought up in a trailer park. With an alcoholic mother. Maybe on 8-mile...in Detroit...oh, wait. That's Eminem. :)

[Wayne]

If you write your memoir, with as much integrity and honest as memory allows, will writers like Frey and Augusten Burroughs, who deliberately manipulate or even invent episodes from their lives, have changed the genre of "memoir" so that it no longer means what it used to mean?

I don't know. I guess there's still room for memoirs like Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking," right? I mean, Didion doesn't have herself drunk and ready to throw down in the middle of a funeral, or whatever, and still people buy many copies of her excellent book. So, I guess there would be a market for a memoir like the one you hope to write, if it's well done.

From what I understand, the memoir is a tough genre to crack if you want to do it right, which is why I think there's a sort of profound laziness in what Frey and Burroughs did. I am speaking of them as writers, and am not making any statement about the lives tried to write about.

My favorite memoir, I think, is Edmund Gosse's "Father and Son," published in 1907. Nothing flashy, just really compelling and aching and sad and tender, the way it must have been to live it.

[pseudostoops]

I have a lovely talented writer friend who recently (mostly) jokingly suggested to his father that he had done his children a disservice by being relatively normal, since it gave them nothing to write about. Dad drily suggested, "why not write the hardship you endured because we wouldn't let you have Nintendo?"

You seem to be sitting on a heap of compelling stories, and the built-in audience from your blog would have to be a strong point in a manuscript's favor, no?

[kelly]

I think you're right on.

So write on!

[Sara]

Every memoir is twisted at least a bit by a person's desire to rewrite their life, to find more of a narrative within it, to make it seem like part of a bigger whole. I understand and accept that, when reading one.

What got me about the Frey story, when it broke, was not the stuff about making himself out to be a Badass Cop Runner-Over. It was the part (not mentioned as much in the major media that I've seen, but I saw it on Smoking Gun) about him appropriating the deaths of two older girls in the area and giving himself a role in that tragedy. Making the awfulness of teenagers killed by a train-car accident just more about himhimhimhimhim.

That's where I draw the line. Mess with your own narrative and interior voice all you want. The problem, for me, really comes when you mess with other people's storylines.

I've never seen you do that. I *have* read you make the awful and painful into something familiar, reachable, and understandable.

[Anne Glamore]

Someone else writing about this noted that anything you write about yourself is obviously filtered- by your memory and your impression of how you fit in the situation, which may not necessarily be how others saw it.

I think readers know that when they read a memoir, though. The comparison of "Magical Thinking" to Frey that someone made above is a good one.

[Lisa V]

I would read and buy your book for others. Then I would talk about how my "friend" wrote it. Then my friend Sue would say a "real friend or an imaginary one in the computer ? "

My sibling is an alcoholic. Sometimes she and friends who are in her program get in a game of one upsmanship, "I was so drunk..." I think it must be a natural phase. As an addict you keep secrets for so long that when you can spill them sometimes you go overboard. Writing them down and call them truth is another thing all together. This doesn't seem to be a matter of seeing truth from a different point of view from others, but out and out fabricating.

Have you read "Pligrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard ? Slow, but lovely memoir like book.

[e]

This is an addict's memoir, and addicts are notorious for being untrustworthy. I don't think he needed to embellish to touch his readers, and the truth is actually more compelling. This does more to damage the genre of memoir than it does him or Random House given all the publicity.

I'd buy a book you wrote. You deal in truths and don't shy away from all their messiness.

[JohnC]

I would also buy your book. What I think ultimately Mr. Frey's failing is that he tries to make his sotry inspiring and to "help people". That is the sign of a poor writer, and a rotten memoirist. That is why I like that attitude you are expressing.

[angstyjen]

I'm a long-time reader and lurker. . .I love your writing, particularly because it is so honest and true. Flannery O'Connor said that anyone who survives childhood has enough writing material for a lifetime (I'm paraphrasing), so I think you should go for it!

P.S. For what it's worth, I had a stranger-than-fiction upbringing as well. I think screwed-up people are so much more fun at parties!

[Jeanette]

I've been reading your blog for some time now, and have actually gone to the trouble of picking through your archives as well.

I've noticed that while the posts are often spurred by external events, the blog itself seems to take place inside your own mental space. The fact that you posses such a clearly defined "voice" is evidence of a tremendous talent.

What I find most compelling about your writing is that you speak from a series of interior crossroads. You are incredibly skilled at illuminating the constant inner tensions of you life.

To compare your writing to that of James Frey is like comparing "Girl With a Pearl Earring" to "Guernica".

Your writing is all about the act of seeing. And in faithfully recording the details of your subject, you penetrate it's essential truth. You imbue the the object of your gaze with a numinous quality, *because* you have looked at it so intensely. It is your attention that raises the mundane details to a higher level.

Frey's work, by contrast, is not about seeing. Rather he is concerned with visceral effect. He captures random snapshots of chaos in order to illustrate what he believes is a moral truth. The details need not be clear. What matters is the horror, the drama and the ultimate conclusions he wants his reader to draw.

In the end, these are both valid ways to illustrate a subject, even if that subject is one's own life.

But for the record, I prefer the quiet, detailed gaze of an Old Master any day.

[Julie]

If you haven't had ANY kind of drug addiction, you have no idea where James Frey is coming from. I have had a very small addiction - stemming from major, major migraines starting at the age of 6 (i'm now 31) and bad doctors who didn't know what to do with me and prescribed opiods...thankfully now I have the best specialist in the world - but anyway, never, never wish you had a drug problem.

Yes, he elaborated and probably lied some. But for those with drug problems (or drug problems in the past), this book is one of the few that gets the message right.

Just wanted to share my opinion. It is just MY opinion! LOVE your blog!!! Please do write a book...bought the "Day in the Life" book and have already passed in onto friends!

THanks -

[esther]

i'm so happy you wrote this post.

thank you.

[Karen]

I recently posted this quote from a memoir I read (Dancing with Cuba by Alma Guillermoprieto); I think it perfectly describes what a memoir must be:

"With nothing to go on but this fistful of tatters [a few letters, a notebook, a few mementos from her students], it would be absurd to claim that the following pages are a reliable historical account of the events that took place in my life during those six months. Yet this is not a novel. It is a faithful transcription of my memories, some of them hazy, others riddled with holes left by the passage of the years, others patched up by time and the filters of experience and distance, and still others, no doubt, completely invented by the stubborn narrator we all have within us, who wants things to be the way they sound best to us now, and not the way they were."

[TB]

You totally nailed how I feel about this Frey thing. I don't particularly care that he embellished because his story was still compelling, but he left out so much more of what I would have like to have known about. The things that he could have spoken truly about are just hanging around the fringes of his book and I miss them.

[mags]

I read a lot of memoirs & really enjoy them, much like I enjoy your posts, for the reason that they are a good vehicle for sharing common experiences and feelings--and entertaining to boot. But I read them knowing that they are not historical textbooks. I have the feeling that most people's memories are like my own; little snapshots of certain events & I have to fill in the background as best I can.

Frey, however, is different. He wrote the book as fiction and did not rewrite it to sell it as a memoir. It is fiction. I am the same age as he, and went to a similar school and hung with a similar crowd (wealthy white frat/soroity kids). There was a large amount of drinking and drug use and NO ONE, not ever, used crack. We, like Frey, could afford to buy whatever drugs we wanted. Crack is what people use when they can't afford good drugs. Plus, if you have ever been to Denison, you know that it isn't exactly a hotbed of crack houses. So I have issues with people calling this book inspirational when it is all bullshit. I don't believe he was/is an addict...he drank a lot & got a couple of DUI's so his parents sent him to rehab to avoid jail time.

Also, I have a brother who IS a crack addict and has been to rehab a million times (embellishment!)like most of them do, so the whole "I went to rehab one time & am all better" just isn't reality with this type of addiction.

[lollybiscuit]

I too have been following the James Frey controversy. Your post is one of the most thoughtful and compelling that I have read on the subject.

[Dawn]

Melissa,

Remember that even within families, memories are different. I find that sometimes when I am talking with my own mother about things I CLEARLY recall ( like her calling me "Hoover" or "Queen Kong" when I wanted seconds) she does not remember at all.

When you get into heavier things, peoples ability to shield their role, or lack of a role as the case may be can be stunning.

I came to the conclusion that my experiences- as a survivor of incest, as a survivor of abuse and neglect - was just that - MY EXPERIENCE. I stopped looking to others to fill in the pieces of my own memory that are quite in tact.

My own brother doesn't recall some of the things that happened To us, and he was standing right next to me as they occurred. I am actually happy for him to not have these pictures in his mind. But I do, so I speak them as I see them. He does not deny that they happened, but simply that he doesn't remember.

There is always someone who could call someone else a liar.

Be well.

[Wayne]

I, too, would read your memoir. But as much as I really like your blog, I think that the way a memoir is written is very different from the way a blog is written. So I would read your memoir because I would want to see how you applied your talent to a very different kind of beast, genre-wise.

[clickmom]

A good writer can write an entertaining tale about anyone.

Go to it!

[AMG]

I actually bought into all the hype, bought the book, read it, and didn't like it at all. I really disliked his style of writing, and I actually thought to myself, "This NEVER would have been published had it not been a biography." This is probably the wrong thing to say, but I just don't think he's that talented of a writer, and when I read that he sumbitted it to publishers many times as fiction and it was rejected, and it was only accepted after he started selling it as a memior, I thought "Ahhh...I see." And this isn't because I dislike people who write in interesting ways - ee cummings and Chuck Palahniuk are two of my favorite writers. I just don't think Frey does it in an interesting, intelligent way.

And rant is done.

On a lighter note, look up the lyrics to My Humps. You'll suddenly understand why our society is where it is. :)

[mel]

this whole thing reminds me of this

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/kaycee.html

and this

http://queserasera.org/archives/000949.html

i wonder if this isn't some sort of mental illness. Like an off shoot of Munchausen (sp?) where people make themselves sick to get attention. what makes people want a different life so badly they would go to these lengths? 'Kaycee' and Mr. Frey invented a life that elicits pity and admiration for the triumph over adversity. That seems very much the same motivation as in Munchausen's syndrome.

it really seems surreal to me

[quinn]

The whole thing still irritates me, for many of the reasons already discussed. You nailed it in your entry, and as there have already been a plethora of Very Good Points in your comments section, I will just add my "ditto" to everyone that said they'd read your memoir.

[Wendy McHenry]

You go, Melissa! I'll totally buy your book :-)

I think this whole James Frey thing is ridiculous, I really do. I read his book when it first came out, and he didn't get much attention for over 2 YEARS when Oprah did her schpiel on it. I thought way back then it was a terrific book, and I don't care what did and did not happen. A memoir is written from the author's own point of view.

Think of it this way: an optimist and a pessimist both will view the same exact events in totally different ways.

Have you ever had a sibling or parent react to a story by saying "That's not the way I remember it happening"?

I have my way of remembering events in my life, and should I write a memoir someday, I guess I will have to publish it as "Fiction", because I am not going to go fact-check my own version of my life.

With that said, James Frey apparently did embellish some parts of his story. Nonetheless, it remains a very important book for any addict or any family member of an addict. Would removing or changing those 20 pages change the message of the book? I don't think so.

I think the worst thing that happened is that Random House left off a disclaimer, or should have published it as Fiction, or said it was "loosely based" on Frey's life.

*Steps off her soapbox*

[Lil' Sis]

I think the idea in the Slate article that the fact that he wrote about going to such extremes can lead people with problems to think theirs are "not that bad" and to not seek treatment. That seems to be the irritation to the addiction counselors I know. (I work in a therapy office.)

As for Lis' memoirs, please don't push her! I know everyone would like to read it, but it's a very heavy subject if she does decide to tackle it. Even her just mentioning "the bad things" has me immediately bursting into tears. It's something that she will have to do on her own schedule. And I can guarantee you won't love the book. You'll think it's amazing and heart-wrenching and disturbing, but you won't love it.

-miao.

[Texas T-bone]

I equate calling fiction fact to the growing number of reporters who've lost their jobs because they've made up sources, quotes or used others' work as their own. If a person is writing their life story, what exactly is the point if it's not the truth? Aha! To sell books. Exactly.

As for "My Humps," I think it's either about a camel or the number of lovers the camel has had. So sad that at one recent time it was a top iTunes download.

[Jennifer]

You're the best. I would totally read your book.

[KBM]

This is one of your best entries that I have read-- let me just add my 2 cents. I loved the book, I love struggle and triumph, even through what might now seen as embellishments. STILL, what about the psuedo-Steven Tyler character that comes to the rehab center, whom Frey himself criticizes, because the story that the "rock star" tells is so embellished? The frustration that Frey purports to have felt with the "rock star" is the same frustration that I have with Frey's story now. Thanks for listening.

[lisa]

I'm de-lurking as well.

I read Frey's book. From page one I knew it was bullshit.

A man arrives at the airport insensate from drugs... He has a bloody hole on his cheek, teeth missing, blood, snot and other nasties covering his shirtfront and the ticket agent just directs him to his seat? OOOOkaaay.

Is Oprah so removed from reality that she didn't see the unlikeliness of this? Clearly, the answer is yes. Ditto for the book's bazillions of devoted readers.

Addiction does not read like a true crime novel. My brother died of a heroin overdose, and of the thousands of large and small truths that arose from the tragedy of his death, the most remarkable was the utter banality of it. One day he was here, the next day he was gone. This does not make his/our story less compelling, rather more so.

For Frey to cloak his story in a made up bad-assness is pathetic.
I agree with the person who said he was a frat boy who got a couple of DUI's and his parents sent him to dry out to avoid harsher sentencing. Crack addicts can't put on matching socks, yet Mr. Frey managed to graduate from college on time, I guess attending class and writing papers between his daily blackouts.

The book is not simply 'embellished'. It is a lie through and through and for this Mr. Frey is despicable.

I once read an interview of Mary Karr, and she said she got the best advice about memoir writing from Tobias Wolfe (who wrote 'This Boy's Life, a devastating and honest memoir). He told her simply to tell the truth. There is power and freedom in the truth.

[Sue]

The thing that pissed me off most about Frey was that he is a pretty bad writer, really. His WRITING struck me as affected and stilted, but I was willing to forgive him because his STORY was amazing. But then it turns out the story wasn't even that great. That's what got me.

You are a much better writer than he is.

When I worked in the news biz, we were always looking for the "news hook" - the new thing. So each story couldn't have been something that was done before. The information glut in the world leads editors to be so jaded that it is hard to get the truth out - they are so busy looking for the odd and new.

[jilbo]

In a series of bizarre coincidences that make me feel like my opinion matters, i finished Frey's book one day before the smoking gun article. And then, two days ago i finished "Liar's Club", and am now reading "Cherry".

As i look back on A Million Little Pieces, I think LOTS of it was exaggerated. I could be specific about what, but that would take too long. Having said that, the book was utterly compelling and i could not put it down.

But, Mary Karr wins hands down, because i beleive.

[Tara]

Melissa, as many others, I truly enjoy your blog. I check it several times, everyday, hoping for another insite/installment. I also read Frey's book. I was not as compelled as others have stated, but I thought the idea of another approach to addiction (other than the 12 steps) was interesting. And I wanted to believe his success at defeating his addiction on his own terms could be true. I thought it hopeful, because I find it hard to believe there can only be one true answer (12 step wise) to addiction. My heart aches a bit when you mention the bad things, I do hope, when you are ready, you will share. I have found through my own bad things, when I speak them aloud or share them, I find I am not alone. And the thought of helping someone else feel not so alone, drives me forward, to reach out again. Thank you for doing what you do.

[RockStar Mommy]

I agree with Sue. James Frey is a mediocre writer. There is nothing special about the way that he writes; he does not have an outstanding style. But he is a good storyteller. That proves you don't have to be an excellent writer in order to get your work in print.

You're a good storyteller, too. Sometimes your sentences run on or your punctuation is a little off (I'm not critising; I'm an English major and my writing skills still lack), but it still doesn't take away from the stories that you tell.

There are no rules to writing a best seller. No one knows what will sell well and what won't. There are plenty of shit books that have gone to the top of the charts, and many fantastic books that have barely even seen the light of day. But, the important part is to write what you know and write as honestly as possible. I think that the honesty is truly just about being honest to yourself, not about writing facts in chronological order. The more honest you are, the more real the writing is, the more others can relate to what it is they are reading. Having your own voice and projecting it out loud will get you much further than trying to write what you think others will read.

Good luck with it and I really do hope that you find what you are looking for out of all of it.

[Lil' Sis]

2 more things...

I have an ex boyfriend who was a heroin addict, and kicked it on his own, with no outside help, and has never relapsed. That being said, he also won't (can't?) go a day without drinking and smoking pot, and often quite a bit of cocaine, and maybe a few pills for good measure. But he's off the heroin! The problem with pulling one's self out of an addiction on one's "own terms" is that one's "own terms" got one into that situation to begin with. I'm not saying that it won't work, but it's not going to work for a lot of people. At least the 12-step plans give the addict a framework and a direction or focus.

Also, do all of these people really not know that "My Hump" is about the fact that Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas has nothing more than her (quite unimpressive) AzzN'Titties going for her? Can I just say that MY Lovely Lady Lumps are better than hers?

-Miao

[Tara]

Umm, I think its obvious that a heroin addict that no longer uses heroin, but requires alcohol, pot, cocaine and pills on a daily basis cannot be considered recovered of anything. I would venture that he hasn't kicked the heroine in as much as replaced it with a bunch of other stuff.

I found Frey's approach different from what is normally presented with regard to treating addiction. And as I stated, I wanted to believe it could be possible. I did not intend to disregard the 12 step program. However, I don't believe everyone fits into a cookie cutter treatment. According to his book, he was in treatment, in rehab, not recovering entirely on his own. He was given a framework and direction, and I don't think his book purports (I think that is a word) that such things are not important or necessary. As I understood it, he had a problem in the fundalistic belief of giving over one's life to a God/higher power to be able to heal. Which happens to be a opinion I share. Whether or not it works for a lot of other people is not so much the point, but simply the fact that it is what worked for him. And for any other person that finds comfort and strength in that, I don't see the problem.

I felt a bit slammed, and I wanted to clarify my thoughts, not heat up a flame.

[Stefanie]

Writing is not so much about having a compelling story to tell but about having a voice. At least that's been my experience and I have a book coming out that's not about anything anyone else couldn't have written about. Babies. But it's sarcastic and written from my point of view and I did that by getting my general "writing" to the right people. Take heart. You don't have to make anything up. The truth is always more interesting.

[Jack's Raging Mommy]

It's odd the ambivalence in people this fiasco has brought about. I am a huge reader of memoirs (and they are a lot like book bound blogs) but I also take things with a grain of salt. Then again it seems Mr. Frey wanted us to use the economy size salt canister from Wal-Mart.
At any rate, Mary Karr rocks, and you should check out the sequel to "The Liar's Club" called "Cherry".

[jen]

I have mixed emotions about this book. I read The Smoking Gun’s report and understand the 20 pages in question hold every major plot point and it’s a difference of fraternity houses vs. crack houses – what’s reality and what the book says are worlds apart. That seems so wrong to me. Also, I’m pissed that Freygate is going to put undue scrutiny on my memoir, even though mine is buffered with a disclaimer. (Although I didn’t make up huge life-altering events – I just spiced up conversations, more because of my lousy memory, rather than intentional deception.)

However, if Frey’s writing stems from his own emotional truth, then I’m less concerned about the validity of the chronology. Hundreds of thousands of people wouldn’t have read and loved it had it not touched them, so my question is that if his book helps people, do the ends justify the means?

According to the people at my publisher (not Random House) everyone in the business knew the book was a million little lies. Everyone. What no one’s mentioning is the scandal is really the best marketing ploy ever. I can’t flip on the news channel without seeing Frey’s smug mug and that ugly book jacket. Each time I check his Amazon ranking, A Million Little Pieces is listed at #1. (And you just know he’s going to get another book deal, movie rights, etc. out of the scandal.)

So I’m torn between being angry with Frey and wondering if it’s too late to write myself a drugs-and-prostitution narrative arc…