The controversy today pushed the Oprah Book Club version of his book to #1 on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307276902/

Actually, I am somewhat surprised that Salon didn't reference their earlier discussion about this topic: specifically, the controversy over Vivian Gornick's memoir "Fierce Attachments." Gornick's memoir departed from life in quite a few ways too, apparently, and Gornick put up an impassioned defense of her definition of "memoir," and there was much back-and-forth about same here in Salon in 2003. Read about it at http://www.salon.com/books/letters/2003/08/19/corrigan/index.html.

Anyway, like I said, I'm surprised Laura Miller didn't reference it. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

I don't know if James Frey fabricated parts of his story or not, and if he did, shame on him. But the level of schadenfreude evident in the media's spin on this latest revelation about Frey's novel is painfully obvious. Based on the story in Salon, the facts show that Frey's story may not be completely true, but they don't DISPROVE his story either. The mother of the dead girl in the car crash says she has no memory of James Frey, and the Salon story says that Frey wasn't involved in the death of her daughter. Frey's novel corroborates this latter detail: he was nowhere near the car at the time of the accident. The fact that the cops or the mother don't have the same perception of the events that James did is hardly surprising; he was a rebellious teenager who blew everything out of proportion and spun it into this fantasy that the world was out to get him, as most teenagers do in their high drama, insulated universe. And more importantly, the facts in dispute do not comprise the major plotline of the novel in the first place. As far as being discredited, I personally don't know any young thug types who read this memoir and placed Frey on a pedestal for his street cred. So I'm not sure how many disappointed fans he'll have in that sector. As far as the Oprah crowd goes, I suspect that the biggest conclusion they drew from the book was how incredibly hard the struggle to overcome addiction can be. Whether James knew the young girls who died in the car crash doesn't change the fact that he had an addiction to drugs and alcohol that almost destroyed him, and by facing his demons (in his own painfully self destructive, I wanted-to-kick-the-crap-out-of-him-throughout-most-of-the-book way) he survived. For the author of this article to suggest that Frey might be responsible for Lily's death is even more theatrically tragic and overdramatic than Frey's assertion that he was blamed for the death of the young girl. Now who's the one telling stories?

I think most people realize that memoirs are limited by an author's memory and subject to exaggeration. That said, I have hardcover first editions of both A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard. I just looked them over carefully. There is no mention on either book jacket or inside pages about what type of books they are - memoirs, novels, dictionaries, self-help books. I assume the paperbacks also lack classification. They're just books and the reader is free to take what they want from them.

Regardless of fact vs fiction debate, A Million Little Pieces is one of the best books I've read in the past few years. (I read it when it first came out.) If I would have started it on a weekend, I would have read it straight through, but alas, I started on it mid-week. I remember staying up until the wee hours, stumbling to work on 3 hours sleep and then sneaking a few pages at my desk when no one was looking. It was truly an addictive read.

In Cold Blood was subject to the fact vs fiction debate in its day too, but it seems to have held up well over the years.

I'm going to resurrect a topic from a while ago and refer to "A Reader's Manifesto." It resonated with me when I first read it and I am reminded of it now.

So Frey's work was always somewhat fishy and suspicious? How then do you explain the breathy and credulous review printed right here in Salon? (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2003/04/19/frey/index.html) (To be fair, the article on the book club selection of A Million Little Fabrications was spot on, insightful, and possessing none of the overbaked prose of the link above)

I especially chuckle at this line: "And yet it's a fierce and honorable work that refuses to glamorize that author's addiction or his thorny personality." Refuses to glamorize yes...that's the ticket! Honorable eh?

One of the points of "A Reader's Manifesto" is that the review community will call something great, then a while down the road when it's exposed as complete crap they respond with "yeah, we thought that all along." American Beauty is a good parallel example in the movie business - everyone loved it now most people (critics) pretend they thought it was mediocre all along.

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At this point it's become a given that a book that receives major media attention is most likely complete garbage. The review I linked to above is so silly I'm tempted to think it's actually a joke. The passages picked out of the book are horrendous, as is the review itself.

You expect that in something like video-game reviews reviewers will fall for the "next big thing" over and over again, allowing themselves to be swallowed up by the hype. Video game "journalism" is immature as are most of it's practicioners. Book reviewing, however, has the reputation of being a crusty, informed intellectual endeavor. (I can only assume that is for purely historical reasons)

How is this for a review: the writing is awful and it's not believable at all.

What's so precious about Frey is that his formula was exactly the same as everyone else yet was somehow passed off as some sort of "ballsy" outsider in the same bizzare fashion that Bush can be a Washington outsider after having been President for 6 years. Just another product of the hype machine.

This emperor has no clothes revelation of the book review press has happened so many times now there is little credibility left. Do us all a favor and just stop reviewing books altogether. That may sound harsh but really it's for the best.

We saw the same thing happen to the art industry when museums began putting up "paintings" of dogs walking through knocked over paint. These days a speck of fecal matter is art and 99% of the population sees that for what it is - crap.

Reading is an exploratory experience - but things like the Oprah book club and the copycat reviews have made consumerism stand above taste, personal preference and common sense. Pre-release hype leads to breathless reviewers falling all over themselves which leads to best-sellers because those "in the know" have declared something worthy.

I am a firm believer that "reading anything is better than not reading" is both false and a weak rationalization.

This has been a bit rambling so let me summarize:

1: Most book reviews are awful in both analysis and writing, and serve no purpose other than to further homogenize an industry that is already far too homogenized.

2: We are already seeing a repeat of the tired pattern - review calls book great, book turns out to suck for a variety of reasons, reviews happily pretend they knew that all along. (Then of course turn around and immediately go hype the next big thing)

3: The review published in Salon was hilariously bad and you guys should be ashamed.

4: Anyone with common sense (read: most people other than book reviewers I guess) could tell you that "based on true story" rarely means that and that Frey's book was not believable.

5: You would be much better off doing reviews by picking books up at random - readers might actually learn something other than what the incestuous literary circle has decided is this weeks flavor.

Because in the end that's what book reviewing has largely become - an outlet for distributing overwraught press releases about books people are talking about, mostly because of publisher pre-release hype.