Letters to the Editor
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Oprah v. Publishers
While I have to say that I agree with a lot of H. Frey's article, there is one point where I really disagree.
"Today, Oprah brought Talese on to prod her about this. She asked whether there weren't "red flags" in "A Million Little Pieces" that should have led Doubleday to investigate whether Frey's story was true...But here's a question: If Oprah can see now that outrageous events... were "red flags" that the publisher should have heeded, why didn't she pause there, too, before choosing "A Million Little Pieces" for her club?"
To put it bluntly, it is not Oprah's job, as a reader, to determine whether or not the memoir being presented to her is truth or fiction. In those moments when, as a reader, she becomes incredulous at Frey's story, she is soothingly reassured that this story is, in fact, true; it is a memoir.
This does not mean that as readers we should fail to be critical, but Frey's memoir is incipient for a number of reasons. First, it buys into a narrative we are comfortable with: the individual overcoming incredible trauma and adversity to triumph. Second, this memoir is tricky because of the way it holds up "Truth" with a capital T as a value. If memoirs, by definition, are a kind of creative non-fiction, in which authors use their experience, loosely, as a jumping off point to address other issues (addiction in this case,) as readers, we may be very comfortable with authors bending the truth: changing names, dates, circumstances, or even time lines to make the story more coherent or meaningful. This, seemingly, is not a problem. We do not need some ridiculous rating system in books. This is beyond reason. The truth-value of memoir per se is not the issue. The issue is Frey and the way he uses truth throughout his marketing campaign, television appearances, and public speaking events. The problem here, is the author, the publisher, and the marketers of this text talk about the truth in grandiose terms, which is pretty balls-ey and in the end offensive when we find out that the truth the author espouses has very little relation to the text he has created.
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Remembering
I have never paid any attention to Oprah or her book club, but I paid attention to her tangle with James Frey and Nan Talese. None of the three is as important as the conversation they launched: a national discussion of truth and lies. James Frey, I think, is only a surrogate in the conversation, a surrogate for all the shameless public liars Americans have been enduring for the past several years. There is no television forum for a general discussion of public lying--or there wasn't one until James Frey stumbled onto center stage and allowed the public to weigh in on truth and lies. Oprah stumbled when she called the Larry King Show and came out in favor of lies, but the public sure came out in favor of truth and accuracy.
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Blame Oprah, please...
When you put trust in a celebrity -- who doesn't live in the same world most of us posting here do -- to tell you what to read, much less anything else, you run the risk of being severely embarassed and disappointed.
Yes, James Frey and his publisher should be held accountable. Don't forget how the problem got started: By someone who thinks her words and opinions are wiser and more enlightened than our own and the people -- namely us -- who pay attention to them...
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So, who's next in the dentist's chair?
Let's see: what other figure has distinguished himself in public by telling lies? How about Oprah Freying George W. Bush?
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Oprah and fake memoirs
Ms. Frey forgets that Oprah is a television entertainer. Her interest in books extends exactly as far as their ability to increase her ratings. True, false, who cares as long as people watch the show!
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Celebrity Name-dropping
Did anyone else find the name-dropping yesterday a little icky. There's Nan Talese being exposed as incompetent and she segues into, "When I was in Plains, Georgia with President Carter and Rosalyn." And Oprah later on dropping Gay Talese's name into the mix. Sheesh!
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The Bottom Line
What is the bottom line of this dust-up between James Frey, Oprah and the public at large? That lying has consequences. "Truth" has, in recent years, taken a hit as a virtue that one needs in their arsenal of ethics. Witness the fact that the "buzzword" of the year was "truthiness" - we just don't seem to have much regard for the act of telling the truth anymore. If we can lie and get away with it, it must, therefore, be truth.
I'm a middle school teacher. I hear lies all day long. Sadly, the culture of "I'll-lie-until-I-get-caught" has trickled down to the younger set - those who ape the behavoir of their elders. I for one, am glad to see this issue raised: that truth DOES matter and not just if you get caught lying!
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"The Kingdom of Oprah" Banishes Frey
A substantial part of my academic research is about Oprah Winfrey, so I Tivo'ed yesterday's show with piqued interest, both personal and professional. I agree, Frey clearly lied and that is both morally reprehensible and just plain stupid; how he could have possibly thought that the discrepancies in his book would not have been easily uncovered, especially after reaching stratospheric popularity as an Oprah's Book Club selection, escapes me. But what also escapes me is the lack of checks and balances in this case, for which all parties involved--Frey, Nan Talese, Doubleday, the publishing industry in general, and Oprah herself--are guilty. Frey is guilty of lying, not merely of "altering details," in his memoir; he failed to check and balance his ethics when he wrote, published, and publicized his book, because at any time he could have acknowledged his deceptive actions and saved himself the resultant public shame of being caught in many lies. Nan Talese and Doubleday, as well as the publishing industry in general, are guilty of looking the other way when they say that they just "do not have time" to fact-check the books they publish; especially when a memoir proclaims to BE a true story (not just based on one), it is their inherent responsibility to do everything within their power to check facts. While Nan Talese is correct in her assertion that it is impossible to "get into the mind of an author" to verify artistic interpretation, it is possible to get the same documentation that The Smoking Gun obtained which disproved easily provable facts about Frey's work; Doubleday should have gotten there first, and if they had, this whole debacle would have been cleared up prior to publication. Oprah is guilty of failing to check and balance her own doubts about the veracity of the book's claims. While watching the show, I had the same thought that Hillary Frey subsequently expressed in her Salon article: namely, that Oprah should have listened to the inner doubts that caused her to have early red flags about some of the book's more salacious accounts before she chose the book for her book club. Oprah seems to have reversed herself right along with the rest of the population, as though she couldn't possibly have had a clue that there were, as she said yesterday, "fantastical" details about the book. However, as we learned from Oprah on yesterday's show, the books for her book club are chosen months prior to their announcement; why not use that time to do more than rely on her producers, who were clearly so enamored with Frey's book that they could no longer be objective about its content, for her research? If Oprah was "duped," it was not merely by Frey alone; Oprah also duped herself by allowing herself to be caught up in and blinded by the emotional whirlwind about the book. Oprah was as intoxicated by the book's fantastical content as the rest of her readership, but the difference is that she could have done more due diligence than the average reader to ensure that the book to which she was about to ascribe her cultural and financial seal of approval was what she truly meant to endorse. The lack of checks and balances involved in this case make everyone involved--Frey, Nan Talese, Doubleday, the publishing industry in general, and Oprah--partially responsible for the resultant controversy of Frey's book.
Yesterday's show was ostensibly about atonement for the many oversights along the way which led to the chaos surrounding "A Million Little Pieces." Oprah began with an unprecedented apology to her viewers to atone for what she called her "mistake." Frey only begrudgingly atoned for his "lies" only after Oprah forced him to agree with this characterization; if left to his own devices, Frey would have continued his pattern of clouding the truth with semantics in what was a largely pathetic attempt at self-defense. The pre-taped interviews with the journalists, including Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, however, were nails in Frey's coffin; he was already judged, juried, and executed before he even appeared on the show to state his case. Maureen Dowd commented (and I'm paraphrasing here) that Frey should be "kicked out of the kingdom of Oprah." When that clip aired, I knew that this man's career was over. Regardless of how "sorry" Frey tried to appear (and he still tried to evade more responses than he gave, much to his detriment), he was already dead in the water after Oprah and a whole slew of "experts" lectured him on the error of his ways. Granted, Frey is absolutely guilty, and there is now no doubt about that. But the punishment should fit the crime, and public stoning fell out of favor centuries ago.
A more constructive dialogue could have been had by first acknowledging that, while the fundamental message of Frey's book has obviously been powerful and helpful for many of its readers, the end does not justify the means; this approach could have turned a discussion of Frey's obvious mistakes into a teachable moment about the book publication process and how it needs to be changed to incorporate checks and balances and accountability from all parties involved. Instead, the show disintegrated into television farce because it was clearly more important for Oprah to save face at Frey's expense. One of the panelists on the show was incredulous at the fact that Frey was willing to reappear and take his lumps, because no public relations consultant would have advised it; I submit that Frey appeared on the show not because he wanted to, but because he had to in order to salvage whatever bits may remain of his career. In essence, Frey was saving face, too. In light of these motivations, whether yesterday's show was truly about atonement for and learning from one's mistakes--or, instead, about the self-preservation of all parties involved--remains an open question.