Why James Frey Doesn't Get It

by Heather King -- Publishers Weekly, 1/17/2006

Heather King, author of Parched, examines the deep differences between her memoir and A Million Little Pieces

I first read about James Frey's A Million Little Pieces in a New Yorker review. I was working on my own memoir, Parched (Chamberlain Bros.), at the time, so I scanned the piece with interest. Frey and I had a couple of things in common: we'd both had major substance abuse problems; we'd both been to Hazelden (him for six weeks, circa 1992; me for four weeks, six years earlier). But there the similarities seemed to end. It wasn't so much that we were of different genders, that I was a teensy bit older than him, that we'd chosen different approaches to staying sober. No, it was that Frey was angry. The whole tenor of the review was that Frey was angry. The testosterone-fueled rage! The studly ire! In light of my own 20 years as a falling-down blackout drunk, it struck me as an odd stance. The people who really had cause to be angry, it seemed to me, were the ones I'd trampled, cheated on, stolen from and lied to on my way to the nearest bar.

Now that the accusations of lying have surfaced and I've actually read the book, I see the differences go even deeper. Drama is the movement from narcissism to humility, but Frey is exactly the same at the end of his story—minus the drugs—as he is at the beginning: an insecure braggart without a spark of vitality, gratitude or fun. "A ballsy, bone-deep memoir," Salon.com called it, but for any alcoholic worth his or her salt, throwing up blood, puking on oneself, and committing petty-ass crimes in and of themselves couldn't be bigger yawns. What's gritty is the moment, knowing you're dying, when the world turns on its axis and you realize My way doesn't work. What's ballsy isn't just egomaniacally recounting your misdeeds; it's taking the trouble to find the people you've screwed over, looking them in the eye, and saying you're sorry. What's bone-deep—or might have been if Frey had done it—is figuring out that other people suffer, too, and developing some compassion for them. Oprah speaks of "the redemption of James Frey"—but redeemed from what, and by whom? Sobriety, in my experience, isn't the staged melodrama of sitting in a bar and staring down a drink to prove you've "won"—as Frey does upon leaving rehab. It's the ongoing attempt, knowing in advance you'll fall woefully short, to order your life around honesty, integrity, faith.

So, in fact, is writing. It's every writer's sacred honor to "get it right," but perhaps the burden falls heaviest on the memoirist. As a memoirist, it seems to me, something has to have happened to you that you're burning to tell. You've undergone some kind of transformation that matters not because it says something about you, but because it says something about the world; because it touches on the mysteries of suffering and meaning. There may be great leeway in being faithful to this emotional truth, but you have to have an emotional truth to begin with. The details you remember, your stance towards the people you meet, your interpretation of your experiences: all have to spring from this deeper level; this vision you carry around like a secret; the yearning to get it right that eventually drives everything you think, say, do. You have to have some kind of love for the world, with all its terrible suffering; you have to be willing to cut off your writing hand rather than betray by a word what it's taught you. The problem is that it doesn't seem to have taught James Frey much of anything, which is why A Million Little Pieces rings false, on both levels, from start to finish.

I'm not sure where his Hazelden was, for example, but it couldn't have been more different than mine. When I washed up on its shores, nobody told me I had to believe in God and join a "Program" and that I'd drink again if I didn't. Nobody gave me a coloring book. Nobody made me do a moral inventory with a priest. Nobody said I had to be on "constant alert," for the rest of my life, against cross-addictions.I wasn't thrilled to be there either, but the place where I spent 30 days was acountry club-like facility, manned by an expert staff, and peopled not with Hollywood caricatures, butstruggling, flesh-and-blood human beings like me. The place Frey describes is a combination federal prison, inner city detox and B-movie stage set. Who were these vicious thugs (though never as vicious as the macho James, who, in spite of his supposedly severe physical, mental and emotional degeneration, never once in the course of the entire book comes out on the losing end of a showdown) who have the thousands of dollars and/or health insurance to pay for a state-of-the-art rehab? Who are the gatekeepers who let him leave the premises, rendezvous with his tormented rehab girlfriend at a crack house, and breeze back in? Who are these shadowy Dr. Mengele types provoking screams from the medical unit? The only screams I heard during my stay were of laughter—at people who made lame-ass statements like "I have lived alone, I have fought alone, I have dealt with pain alone." With two rich parents, a decent education and an array of loyal friends? Please!

As John Cheever said, "I lie, in order to tell a greater truth." But Frey lied to tell a lesser truth: he lied to make himself look like a hero. He lied—about the crimes he supposedly perpetrated and the tragedies that befell him—because on the one hand he wants the reader to feel sorry for him, and on the other he wants to be held in awe. My biggest accomplishment during treatment was learning to wear pajamas to bed instead of passing out in my clothes. Far gone though he is, by the time Frey leaves, he will have embraced the Tao, rooted out the cause of"The Fury" (childhood earaches), set his bewildered but loving parents straight, and been nominally adopted by a fellow patient who just happens to be a member of the Mafia (right!).

There's one other difference between me and Frey. His book has sold three and a half million copies; mine has sold—well, let's just say ever-so-slightly fewer than that. I could be depressed over the fact that while Frey has assured that he will never be a victim, he's made victims of so many of the people who read his book. I could be angry that a cynical hack job is a runaway bestseller, while a wrenching, factually accurate memoir that I sweated tears of blood to get right, and sent out to the world with fear and trembling, praying I was worthy to call myself a writer, has garnered a more modest following.

But what's to be angry about? I can't believe how lucky I am to do work I'm passionate about. I have convictions I hope I'd be willing to go to the stake for. "I have read the New Testament," Frey says. He should read it again. He should read the passage where Jesus tells the paralytic to take up his mat and walk. Because maybe our mat—what keeps us stuck, sometimes our whole lives—is the illusion that, in order to be loved, we have to pretend to be bigger, better, braver than we really are.

Heather King's Parched was published last spring by Chamberlain Bros.