A Million Typical Reasons
It's so me to only want to read a book after it has been scoured by the public and written up with giant waves of criticism in the press. Yes, I read James Frey's controversial novel, A Million Little Pieces a few weeks ago.
The thing is, it's a really good book. I couldn't put it down. And, if I ever had any inclination to become a drug addict or alcoholic, I certainly won't consider it now. Random House was right when they called it a "visceral" account. It is. I felt nauseuous, sad, angry, pained, happy, giddy and tense while reading this novel.
At a party a few nights after I finished reading what The Smoking Gun has referred to as "a million little lies", I couldn't help but talk about it. A Brit editor I know commented, "See, that's so American. All a Brit would care about is whether or not it's well written and a good story." He may have a point.
Yes, maybe I too wish Frey had labeled his tome "fiction" when clearly huge sections are fabricated. But, it is well written. Frey looks at language differently. He thrusts words into a new realm in order to facilitate the terrible roller coaster his main character finds himself a slave to.
Is that so wrong? I wonder.
posted by Meredith Franco Meyers @ 12:37 AM
5 Comments:
I totally agree with you and all that you're saying. After all the bru-ha-ha about dishonest Frey this and cannibalistic baby crucifying Frey that, what remains is that not one word of that book has changed. Not one. Yet the people who were lauding it one day are the same people who are now throwing burning copies off the Empire State Building. What's changed are the readers of the book allowing their egos to run amuck. I can't read this because it isn't real and I can't read this because he lied to me. He lied to no one. The industry made up the lies around his book, and the only thing he did wrong is allow them to play him like an ass-monkey. Bottom line: is it a good book? Each reader should make up his or her own mind. Either read it and say what you think, or don't read it and be forced to admit that you don't know a damn thing. It's easy, isn't it?
I totally agree with you and all that you're saying. After all the bru-ha-ha about dishonest Frey this and cannibalistic baby crucifying Frey that, what remains is that not one word of that book has changed. Not one. Yet the people who were lauding it one day are the same people who are now throwing burning copies off the Empire State Building. What's changed are the readers of the book allowing their egos to run amuck. I can't read this because it isn't real and I can't read this because he lied to me. He lied to no one. The industry made up the lies around his book, and the only thing he did wrong is allow them to play him like an ass-monkey. Bottom line: is it a good book? Each reader should make up his or her own mind. Either read it and say what you think, or don't read it and be forced to admit that you don't know a damn thing. It's easy, isn't it?
I completely agree, dear friend. A book's ability to move you, regardless of its categorization, is the measure of success. However, label it what it is... and rely on the pages to sell your gospel. Pieces was good. Period. And I'm glad to hear you feel that way even knowing the truth.
He lied to no one? He lied to everyone. Do you think that he was unaware that his agent sold the book as a memoir instead of fiction? I think not. He was culpable in that decision.
Meredith, you asked if it was so wrong? Here is a thoughtful reason why, Yes, it is so wrong. The following was written By Alex Chee:
There would seem to be plenty of object lessons in view for those interested in What Happens When You Lie In Nonfiction. And yet the problem continues. A reader of a memoir or a personal essay is typically interested in the struggle of the writer with the personal moral complexities of their situation. Their interest in the writer cannot survive a falsehood. Much more so in the case of journalism.
I don't know the man, but the way I understand the story is that James Frey was someone who wrote a novel and had no success selling it, and so he called it a memoir and handed it over, and now he is in the place he is in. He admits in the Washington Post's coverage of this to trying to be 'badder' and 'tougher' than he was. Given that he was in rehab, I am in mind of how I have heard repeatedly from every recovered addict I know that addicts usually lie to cover up their self-loathing.
It looks in one way like a fairly cynical act, to resubmit a rejected novel as a memoir. But there's also a good chance that Mr. Frey wasn't sufficiently real to himself when he resubmitted his book this way, and thus he wasn't in a place to understand that he could have an impact on people's lives: himself, his readers, his publisher and everyone who works for them. This inability to perceive oneself as real and capable of having an impact is referred to as a temporary narcissistic condition, in which someone, faced with a condition they imagine to be permanent, acts out narcissisticly. I see it in my writing students when they imagine that what they write will never be finished or published. If this was the case, then, it turned out he was wrong: it would get published. And there would be consequences.
When my students in nonfiction ask me what they can invent, the answer I give them is that at best, they can invent the local color, at the edges---if you don't remember what some was wearing, for example, or what was eaten. But the best nonfiction is written, to my mind, about, to quote Sarah Orne Jewett, That which stays a long time in the mind. You're best off writing about the things you just can't forget, in personal essays. This would include the local color. It is a plain bad idea to invent conversations, much less events, though in both cases, a recollection of their approximate shape is allowable---everyone understands that memory is subjective. This isn't, however, a license to lie. It's also a good idea to remember that most living people reside uncomfortably in prose---they dislike being described and will take issue with it usually, even if the description is complimentary.
What's interesting about the writing of nonfiction for me is the struggle with what is or what was---the struggle to understand the patterns that are present inside information, events, anecdotes. To lie about it is to engage in a kind of self-loathing that projects outward onto the material, and the chance to reach for any authenticity in what is there is lost, as the writer reaches instead for some mask for the material that they imagine is more interesting, more charming, than what they had. The chance to create an intelligent articulate complexity out of what might otherwise be the random chaos of your existence vanishes.
There's always a student of mine who insists the distinctions between fiction and nonfiction don't matter. I never agree. It's the end of your career and your reputation, for sure, but what's at the heart of that deathblow is the pact between a reader and a writer, a pact that fiction is an invention to fit the shape of a truth the writer guesses at, and that nonfiction is the shape of the truth the writer has found in his or her own presence, through research and memory. It doesn't matter that it's hard to work under these conditions. These are the conditions. Why should it be any different for you?
He lied to no one? He lied to everyone. Do you think that he was unaware that his agent sold the book as a memoir instead of fiction? I think not. He was culpable in that decision.
Meredith, you asked if it was so wrong? Here is a thoughtful reason why, Yes, it is so wrong. The following was written By Alex Chee:
There would seem to be plenty of object lessons in view for those interested in What Happens When You Lie In Nonfiction. And yet the problem continues. A reader of a memoir or a personal essay is typically interested in the struggle of the writer with the personal moral complexities of their situation. Their interest in the writer cannot survive a falsehood. Much more so in the case of journalism.
I don't know the man, but the way I understand the story is that James Frey was someone who wrote a novel and had no success selling it, and so he called it a memoir and handed it over, and now he is in the place he is in. He admits in the Washington Post's coverage of this to trying to be 'badder' and 'tougher' than he was. Given that he was in rehab, I am in mind of how I have heard repeatedly from every recovered addict I know that addicts usually lie to cover up their self-loathing.
It looks in one way like a fairly cynical act, to resubmit a rejected novel as a memoir. But there's also a good chance that Mr. Frey wasn't sufficiently real to himself when he resubmitted his book this way, and thus he wasn't in a place to understand that he could have an impact on people's lives: himself, his readers, his publisher and everyone who works for them. This inability to perceive oneself as real and capable of having an impact is referred to as a temporary narcissistic condition, in which someone, faced with a condition they imagine to be permanent, acts out narcissisticly. I see it in my writing students when they imagine that what they write will never be finished or published. If this was the case, then, it turned out he was wrong: it would get published. And there would be consequences.
When my students in nonfiction ask me what they can invent, the answer I give them is that at best, they can invent the local color, at the edges---if you don't remember what some was wearing, for example, or what was eaten. But the best nonfiction is written, to my mind, about, to quote Sarah Orne Jewett, That which stays a long time in the mind. You're best off writing about the things you just can't forget, in personal essays. This would include the local color. It is a plain bad idea to invent conversations, much less events, though in both cases, a recollection of their approximate shape is allowable---everyone understands that memory is subjective. This isn't, however, a license to lie. It's also a good idea to remember that most living people reside uncomfortably in prose---they dislike being described and will take issue with it usually, even if the description is complimentary.
What's interesting about the writing of nonfiction for me is the struggle with what is or what was---the struggle to understand the patterns that are present inside information, events, anecdotes. To lie about it is to engage in a kind of self-loathing that projects outward onto the material, and the chance to reach for any authenticity in what is there is lost, as the writer reaches instead for some mask for the material that they imagine is more interesting, more charming, than what they had. The chance to create an intelligent articulate complexity out of what might otherwise be the random chaos of your existence vanishes.
There's always a student of mine who insists the distinctions between fiction and nonfiction don't matter. I never agree. It's the end of your career and your reputation, for sure, but what's at the heart of that deathblow is the pact between a reader and a writer, a pact that fiction is an invention to fit the shape of a truth the writer guesses at, and that nonfiction is the shape of the truth the writer has found in his or her own presence, through research and memory. It doesn't matter that it's hard to work under these conditions. These are the conditions. Why should it be any different for you?
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