As some readers of James Frey’s first book have demonstrated, people take their time too seriously. Their class-action lawsuits asking for full refunds of the book price are lame excuses to gain reparations for “lost time.”
The author of the memoir “A Million Little Pieces” may be dishing out $2.35 million to fully refund outraged readers who bought the book before January 2006, when it was revealed that Frey wasn’t actually incarcerated as described in his “memoir.”
I can understand readers’ frustration with Frey’s falsified memories, but it is ridiculous to have such an emotional investment in the truth of a book that readers would still be asking for a refund of $9.95 to $34.95.
It’s absurd that to get the refund one must rip out page 163 of the hardcover book or yank off the front cover of the paperback and send it in to the publisher for the $20 they spent three years ago.
It spins a tale of redemption as James Frey’s character outlines his brutal struggle with drug addiction, and the book gained massive popularity in fall 2005 when Oprah added it to her book club.
However, when Frey revealed that parts of the story had been fabricated, criticism and class-action suits ensued.
Isn’t it enough that Frey has been publicly humiliated multiple times on network television? Isn’t it enough that his lack of integrity has been addressed to the point where he has the reputation of literary scum?
I think it would be sufficient to let go of this wretched mess and let Frey slide back into the oblivion from whence he came.
As far as the readers go, the fabrications in Frey’s memoir are irrelevant to the story he weaves about the lost drug world and its victims, and the interesting form he employed.
The book still has literary value. It’s still a good read. The value of the work doesn’t have to rely solely on the truth of the book.
If the story was so compelling and believable, and if readers experienced such an emotional response to its words, then why does the book need to be true?
By using the written word, Frey creates a reality for the reader. The truth in the book is the emotional truth, the truths about general human nature rather than particularities of Frey’s constructed character.
While the marketing of the memoir was misleading, I attribute that to Doubleday Publishing; they should have verified sources regardless of whether they trusted Frey. As a publishing company, they should have taken care to avoid a situation like this.
For Frey, the opportunity to be published ““ a dream of all struggling writers ““ probably eliminated any qualms about publishing his novel as nonfiction.
Besides, the story of a torn-up, homeless, quasi-amnesiac drug addict searching for anything to define a purpose in his life could be applied to any of the thousands of addicts roaming the streets looking for a fix right now.
The fact that Frey could create sympathy for the stories of drug addicts, to humanize their struggles, their plight, their pain, is a feat in itself.
I refuse to believe that reading this book and believing the story to be true would warrant Frey’s extended persecution.
His book ““ regardless of whether it was marketed as a memoir or a piece of fiction ““ was not intended to be a bible for Narcotics Anonymous. It was not meant to be a how-to manual or, rather, a how-not manual.
It was instead a story of a random man’s life and his obscure battle with drugs, and readers should have realized his lack of credibility prior to the exposure of it as partially false.
Frey’s embellishment of the story evoked a strong response from his readers ““ positive and negative.
It created a dialogue about drug use, about addiction, about bad habits and descent into drug abuse at any level, from the homeless teen to the wealthy executive doing lines of cocaine in the bathroom.
This book created a dialogue that hadn’t existed before and the validity of that alone exemplifies the merit of the literature, if not the merit of the writer.
Send your refund money to Bissell at abissell@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.