Thursday, January 19, 2006
By Macarena Hernandez
Dallas Morning News
When did a lie stop being a lie?
I've been wondering that since "A Million Little Pieces" -- James Frey's best-selling memoir about his stint in rehab after a life of crime and drugs -- came under fire last week.
Frey, it turns out, wasn't the Criminal with the capital C wanted in three states that he describes in his book, recollections that he repeated in interviews across the country.
I heard about his book not long after it was published in 2003, but last fall, after Oprah Winfrey blessed it on her show, I couldn't escape it.
"'A Million Little Pieces' is an experience," Oprah told her audience in October, before introducing Frey. "And when you finally, reluctantly, turn the last page, you want to meet the man who lived to tell this tale."
Best-seller lists
Oprah's endorsement helped Frey's story resonate to the top of the best-seller lists, where it remains. It has sold more than 2 million copies and finished last year behind only J.K. Rowling's latest installment of Harry Potter. Frey even became somewhat of a patron saint for substance abusers and their families.
Last week, his story began to unravel. The Smoking Gun, a Web site on crime and celebrity news, uncovered police reports and court documents and conducted interviews that painted a much different picture from the one Frey was selling.
In one instance, he writes about being high on crack and almost running over a police officer. The cop calls for backup. Frey drops f-bombs, calls the cops pigs with a capital P. He gets charged with numerous felonies and locked up for three months.
Except, none of that happened. Frey was detained for a few hours, and an arresting officer described him as "polite and cooperative." No bag of crack in his pocket, only a half-full bottle of cheap beer.
The irony for me is that I was tempted to buy "A Million Little Pieces" a couple of times. Now I'm glad I saved my $12.95.
The reason we read memoirs -- especially the brutally honest, gritty ones -- is because the darker the story, the sweeter the juice. Reading them is like being privy to a conversation between a therapist and a patient, peeking into someone's most intimate thoughts, even the ones we'd rather not admit.
Of course, we don't expect memoir writers to recall each detail and date with the digital precision we expect from, say, journalists. Take Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who in his 70s wrote his recollections, "Living to Tell the Tale." The Colombian-born Nobel Prize winner prefaced his book by writing, "Life is not what one lives, but what one remembers, and how one remembers it in order to recount it."
Memory is tricky
In other words, memory is tricky. You may remember an incident from your childhood differently than your parents do. But each recollection is based on truth.
In 2003, Frey told "Today" host Matt Lauer that he hadn't invented anything, that "everything I wrote about happened."
Now Frey has admitted fudging the facts, although he claims the "essential truth" of the book is intact.
At Amazon.com, where "A Million Little Pieces" claimed the No. 1 spot among books, some readers understandably feel betrayed.
"Disgraceful, dishonest, distasteful," wrote one. "Pure fiction sold to the public as fact."
Others are more forgiving and echo Oprah, who defends the book and dismisses any controversy as "much ado about nothing."
"I'm so disappointed that people are making such a huge deal over a few so-called embellishments in the book," another reader posted to Amazon.com. "The message of 'A Million Little Pieces' -- recovery, hope and inspiration -- is what makes it so powerful and brilliant."
Embellishment would be one thing. Lying is another.
You can claim to cook a mean enchilada, when even your dog refuses to eat the leftovers. But it's another thing to say you served three months in prison when you were there for only a few hours.
What should have made "A Million Little Pieces" so powerful and inspiring is that a reader could have seen that someone who sunk to such depths of desperation and hopelessness actually broke free.
Unfortunately, Frey's falsehoods undercut whatever might have been true.
X Macarena Hernandez is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune.