Revisiting James Frey

I came into work today ready to be another one of the journalists who have skewered James Frey, author of "A Million Pieces."

Walking through Target last week, I noticed his latest book on the shelf and was floored. They gave this hack another chance to write a book? Seriously? The dust jacket called him "celebrated and controversial." Well, one of those is correct.

So I began organizing my outrage in my head as I walked the isles. As a journalist, you don't make it up. It's a simple rule. Authors of a memoirs (accounts of one's personal life), shouldn't make it up either.

For better or worse, I understand facts get fudged when it's a personal experience. People see events through all sorts of lenses, and memory can be faulty. There's just no excuse for typing up straight lies.

That's what Frey did. I never read "A Million Pieces" and sure don't plan on spending any money on his latest book.

As I told George MacDonald about my forthcoming blog, he pointed me to this article in Vanity Fair. It revisits The James Frey Debacle with a dose of perspective and further investigation about his side of the mess.

The conclusion I was left with: Everyone threw Frey under the bus when it was barreling toward them. That was the easy way out. It was a classical tale of celebrity culture building someone up and then tearing them back down.

Oprah, who put the memoir in her book club, had her credibility on the line when she defended him. So what'd she do when the pressure mounted? Had Frey on her show and publicly flamed him.

Vanity Fair's article points out that Frey never considered his book a memoir and casts blame on the publisher for marketing it as such. That's where my anger stemmed from in the first place. If it was a work of fiction, this dust up never would have occurred.

Unfortunately, since the Frey affair, there have been more bogus memoirs published. I distinctly remember the industry promising to re-evaluate its vetting procedure, though little seems to have changed. It still won't let the truth to get in the way of a good memoir.