Fast & Loose With The Truth

Have you heard about the “Oprah’s Book Club” affair? Last fall Oprah Winfrey chose A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, billed as a nonfiction memoir, as her book club selection. Frey’s tale of his life as an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a criminal is full of shocking anecdotes such as undergoing two root canals without anesthesia, and being arrested for running over a policeman while drunk and carrying a bag of crack. Oprah and her entire production company found the book riveting, heartbreaking, un-put-downable; and she presented Frey as an inspiration to alcoholics, drug addicts, and criminals everywhere. Of course, the book went screaming up the best-seller list, enriching the author and turning him into a celebrity.

There’s just one problem with his story: it isn’t true. The Smoking Gun investigated the arrests, looked at the mug shots, visited the jails and the hospitals and the rehab centers – in short, they did the research that Frey’s publisher should have done but didn’t. And they found out that some of it was outright lies, and other parts were wildly embellished versions of real events that happened to Frey or to people he knew slightly. You can read about it at The Smoking Gun.

When the truth began to come out, Oprah at first defended her author. Ultimately, however, the weight of the evidence convinced her that she’d been duped. Yesterday Frey appeared on her show again, along with his publisher, Nan Talese, and Oprah excoriated both of them for playing fast and loose with the truth.

My own view of this runs along the same lines as Oprah’s: they’re both guilty; the author of fraud and the publisher of laziness. However, it started me thinking about the kind of embellishment and fantasy that turned Frey from a normal, spoiled frat boy to a swaggering, brawling, drunken, drug-addicted, dangerous BADASS! In fact, the whole thing started to sound familiar to me. Maybe it does to you, too.

We’ve all known people who can’t seem to tell a straight story. From early childhood we’re exposed to kids who tell whoppers and snowjobs in the vein of Dr. Seuss’ And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street! I went to kindergarten with a girl named Joy who used to tell me tall tales about a boyfriend who took her out driving every evening: “And don’t you dare try to fodder us! ‘Cause Leslie’s got a real fast car!” Yeah, I probably wouldn’t be able to keep up on my roller skates. *rolls eyes* These storytellers become fewer and farther between as we get older, because most of them grow out of it; but I ran into a few while in my teens. I remember one guy who would tell the most outlandish yarns about what he’d been doing since I last saw him – frequently involving travel “out of the state” and martial arts training by government agents.

By the time we reach adulthood these compulsive liars have become pretty rare, and really stand out when we do encounter them. If anyone ever asks me about my most unforgettable character, I’ll tell them about “Roy”. I met him in college and later worked with him, and he used to sit in my office, chain-smoking cigarettes and squashing them out in the big green glass ashtray on my desk, and talking to me about his collection of assault weapons, or his former job as a bodyguard for a Mafioso, or what he heard last night while listening in on his neighbors with a parabolic antenna.

So yeah, James Frey’s fantasized story sounds familiar to me, because I’ve heard it before. The only difference between him and Roy is that Roy didn’t write it down and call it a memoir, and get it published. Which makes me wonder: do these people believe their own tall tales? Frey did make an effort to cover up the true nature of his past, which indicates awareness of the fraud. But it seems to me that it would take more than just nerve to write something like that up and publish it as a book, knowing that so many people would remember him, the events he described, and the truth, or lack of it, thereof. It indicates a pathology that goes beyond spinning yarns for friends and relatives, a need for -- validation? To prove to himself that it really happened that way? Hard to say. At any rate, I don’t plan to read the book. As often happens, the truth (as found at The Smoking Gun) is stranger, and more interesting, than fiction.