In Search of truthiness
This musing on fraudulent James Frey was my first piece for The Ottawa Citizen and Arts honcho, Peter Simpson. February 2006, I think.
Since the summer of 2005, a few friends have suggested that I should read James Frey’s A Million Little PIeces. I had a semi-memoir called Stole This From A Hockey Card published in 2005 that dealt with addiction and identity. Being an addict, my friends naturally felt that Frey’s book was perfect for me. I had no interest. I’d lived my own battle and spent the last few years confronting it through writing. I didn’t need to read about it any more.
Then, in early January, Frey’s book was brought to my attention again. This time it was being reported that the guy might have made up a big chunk of the book. My first reaction was “so what?” all memory is by nature fiction. There are parts in my own memoir that might be untrue to my mother or stepfather (who are minor characters in the book). At times I even ask myself in the book if the things I’ve experienced are genuine or have they become unconsciously confused and distorted over the years. I write about my memory of watching some hockey games in the early 1970s as a kid, but then wonder if I really did watch them at that time or if they entered my memory through television replays I saw in later years. Besides, not to get too philosophical, but what is truth anyway? Plato, for one, believed that those who relied on their senses instead of their intellect were living in caves. These people see only the shadows of things (opinion), not the things themselves (knowledge). I prefer to think of truth has been a bit more murky and subjective. My truth, for example, might not necessarily be your truth.
For example, in Nick Tosches’ brilliant biography of Dean Martin called Dino, there are many segments that involve Tosches’ writing about Martin’s inner thoughts. Obviously, Tosches couldn’t have known what Martin was thinking. It doesn’t matter. Those poetic moments conveyed more about the essence or truth about Dean Martin than any amount of facts. And what about the scores of writers who have oh-so-thinly disguised their own lives behind the mantle of fiction? The list is endless: Marcel Proust, Jack Kerouac, Richard Meltzer, Charles Bukowski, Philip Roth etc… Would Kerouac’s Big Sur or Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, for example, be any better or worse if the reader knew that they were reading fact, not fiction? At the end of the day, I felt, Frey wrote a book about recovery. Clearly the book inspired many readers. Maybe a few of them sought help for their addictions. So, what’s the big deal if Frey embellished an arrest or sixteen?
In short, I didn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Then came Oprah.
When it came out that Frey not only fabricated a number of parts of the book, but that there appeared to be no good reason for doing so – other than to make the author seem like a real tough, big balls, bad ass – then I started to get annoyed. It was also revealed that Frey had actually initially submitted the manuscript for A Million Little Pieces as fiction – only to have it rejected approximately seventeen times. This was now more than a simple case of poetic license or unconscious error. Frey very consciously made-up parts of this book for no reason other than to paint himself in a more heroic fashion.
That’s when I got angry. Here I am writing books that put my “stuff” on the line as I seek some semblance of truth about myself and my life while this schmuck makes a mockery of it all. Frey’s notion of truth appears to be that which makes him more likeable and wealthy. Wait, there’s something familiar about that… someone who says something that they don’t necessarily prescribe to, but stand behind because they think other people will buy into it: politicians, speech writers, advertisers, celebrity endorsements, exercise and diet gurus (e.g. Weight lost/exercise peddler Suzanne Somers had liposuction). Let’s not overlook so-called “reality” TV shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race. They are so heavily dramatized and manipulated that fake “reality” shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office come off as far more factual and honest.
Why no outrage over these on-going equivocations? Must we rely solely on Oprah to show us what is truth?
I’m now reading the book. Naturally, it’s difficult to read it objectively. I’m constantly questioning every part.
And this leads to maybe the biggest truth about honesty and addiction. For years, people were cautioning me about my drinking, but I didn’t really listen and it wasn’t until I finally confronted myself that I stopped drinking. Maybe it’s the same case here. Should it matter to me, you, Oprah, or the readers if Frey is lying? Should any of us be relying so heavily on one voice to find our truth? In the end, as with life, you encounter and sample different experiences and voices and at the end of the day you decide what suits your life best. You find your own truth.
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Meantime, Frey carries on. Despite appearing rather daft on Oprah and Larry King (you’d think that Frey could hire a media assistant to help him lie with more credibility), his book sales (which Oprah likely sees a percentage of) continue to climb. Could Frey’s next project be a memoir about writing a fake memoir? Better still, he could write a fake memoir about writing a fake memoir.
In the end, I guess I’m the schmuck. Instead of writing honest and un-heroic tales of dysfunction and addiction so that I could try and sort out my life, I should have juiced it up a bit with more lurid and juicy tales of gunplay, drunken fistfights, sex abuse, suicide attempts, and root canals. Might not have been my truth per se, but I’m certain it’s someone’s truth. In the end, it’s all works out. The reader gets an epiphany, and I get a great big bag of cash and fame. Everyone feels better.
What more is there?
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There is a beautiful moment of irony about midway through James Frey’s book. After a former rock star visits the treatment to discuss his battles with addiction, a cynical Frey becomes angry at the musician’s apparently outlandish claims of abuse: “Were I in my normal state of mind, I would stand up, point my finger, scream Fraud, and chase this Chump Motherfucker down and give him a breathing. Were I in my normal frame of mind, after I gave him his beating, I would make him come back and apologize to everyone for wasting their precious time.”
Later on the same page, Frey writes: [T]o make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth. That this man is standing in front me and everyone else in this room lying to us is heresy. The truth is all that matters. This is fucking heresy.”
He said it, not me.
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We will never really know what is or isn’t true in Frey’s book. Like dealing with an addict, there’s only so much we can know about the validity of his words. Only James Frey knows his truth and, in the end, he has to live in his skin, not us.
September 7th, 2008 at 2:00 pm e
Speaking of fake memoirs, have you heard about the new fictional satire, Daddy-An Absolutely Authentic Fake Memoir by Andrea Troy? It’s very funny, and she mentions Frey’s and other tell-all books. I bought it at amazon.com.
October 11th, 2008 at 6:32 am e
It’s a short, quick, funny and sharp read. I like the author’s take on the smugness, hypocrisy, and other shortcomings of neocultural self-revelation. She knows the world of memoir and takes good aim. I recommend the book.