Frey's Lies

I have personally disliked the overblown memoirs of people who have been bad, then redeem themselves by writing about their badness; therefore, making millions of dollars indirectly (or directly) from that "badness". For this reason I did not buy or read James Frey's book, "A Million Little Pieces."

Now from what I've been reading on The Smoking Gun and now in today's edition of the New York Times, I may have been right to save my money and time.

The Smoking Gun, an investigative website, broke the story first on Monday:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/jamesfrey/0104061jamesfrey1.html

And not without contacting Frey - several times - and conducting interviews with him. The website's extensive investigative piece seems to show that sections, if not all, of Frey's "memories" were embellished to the point of being fiction. And then there's the realization that Frey had originally submitted the manuscript to publishers as just that - fiction. Hmmmmm? Can you say fraud? If this were any other industry, The Smoking Gun would be considered a "whistleblower" and subject to receiving a percentage of the money that was obtained fraudulently. However, that won't happen.

If all of this is true, every reader who bought Frey's book on the assumption (along with the recommendation by none-other-than Oprah herself) that this was a true story of how extreme addiction leads to extreme crime to final rehabilitation and redemption - every one of Frey's readers has been a victim of fraud and every one deserves their money back. Oprah deserves an explanation and apology, if nothing else, since her endorsement skyrocketed a badly written (from the excerpts I've read online) book to the bestseller list, dumping millions into the pockets of the author and publisher.

As for me, I will continue to ignore books by those who profess to have gone through addiction and/or committed terrible deeds and have survived to become a "good" person.

I've been a "good" person all my life - I've been an RN for almost forty years, cared for my mother-in-law, my parents, my fiance, my ex-husband - raised a daughter alone - have loving family and friends. I've done good deeds all my life - like most of the people around me. That's the "sensationalism" of our lives. No major redemption ncessary.

But I guess Oprah wouldn't want to read our memoirs.