Don’t Shoot the Storyteller
by Sara Nelson -- Publishers Weekly,01/13/2006
I shouldn’t have been surprised: As soon as it was revealed, on TheSmokingGun.com, that James Frey had apparently fabricated, conflated and/or embellished parts of his bestselling A Million Little Pieces, the bookish world started running around as if in Casablanca: they were shocked—shocked!—that not every single word of the book was verifiably "true"
"A true story should be true," one reader wrote to Abebooks.com. "What a liar!" wrote another. For days, the media speculated that Oprah Winfrey herself—who had chosen the memoir for her powerful book club—was going to be forced to recant. (She didn’t. In fact, she stood by her memoir man.) If anyone was at fault, Oprah seemed to say when she called in to Larry King Live, it was publishing folk who misidentified the book as nonfiction.
| Click here to read Talkback comments from other PW readers on this topic |
While it’s common wisdom in the book business that nonfiction sells better than fiction, there have been many examples in recent years that memoirs sell the best of all. So, yes, Frey, or his editor Sean MacDonald or his publisher, Nan Talese, made a "crass" decision to publish Pieces as nonfiction. Never mind that there’s a lot of precedent for such a choice. (Truman Capote’s "true novel," In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, to name two.) Like Nan Talese, the book’s original publisher, who was quoted in the New York Times, I believe that a memoir is not "simply" nonfiction. While based on truth, a good memoir must share many traits with the novel. It has to have a narrative and development and denouement. And sometimes that means the larger "truth" takes precedence over absolute accuracy.
This happens all the time, of course, and memoirists regularly get pilloried for it. (I remember complaints from Dave Eggers's family for some portrayals in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and even the sainted Frank McCourt was questioned about some of his recollections.) But memoirists aren't journalists, they're narcissists. They don't claim to tell the whole story; they're only really interested in their own.
So I wonder about all those people who say they feel duped by James Frey. Would they have bought an earnest, footnoted academic treatise on alcoholism if it read like, well, an earnest, footnoted academic treatise on alcoholism? Somehow, I doubt it. But in typical American build ’em up, tear ’em down fashion, they have to have somebody else to blame for letting them believe what they want to believe in the first place.
I'm not letting Frey off the hook , exactly—though I do admire his books and have occasionally interacted with him socially. (Note to SmokingGun: Detailed documentation of this acquaintanceship can be made available.) True, Frey should have reined in his narrative excesses and sharpened his memory. His editors probably should have said the book was "based on a true story," and they might also have issued all the usual caveats about conflation and attenuation.
But vilifying Frey&Co is both beside the point—and way too easy. Like many memoirists before him, who, after all, practice what is known in writing programs as creative nonfiction, Frey produced a compelling portrait of an addict's life complete with all its deceptions and grandiosity—and he gave the readers what they want. He changed some names to protect the innocent, and some details to protect—and, it must be said, aggrandize—himself. But he didn't write front-page newspaper profiles of people he'd never talked to—and he never claimed that Pieces was supposed to be All the Presidents' Men.
Or, to paraphrase another great (fictional, I think) character: When it comes to memoir, readers say they want the truth, but they can't handle the truth. Not unless it reads like a novel.
Post a comment Return to article View other article discussions
| Submitted by: | jim telon 10/2/2006 11:21:52 AM PT |
love the article
| Submitted by: | Jennifer C. Hunt Phd 3/4/2006 11:37:42 AM PT |
| Location: | NYC |
| Occupation: | Social Scientist |
The Frey fracas has resulted in an enormous amount of hypocracy by individuals in publishing industry, including agents and editors. While I would not have been comfortable suggesting a fictionalized account represented actual memories, distortions, inventions, and, on occasion, lies are probably common in the memoir genre as Sara Nelson suggestions. There was a debate about this that occurred in the academic world some years ago when a Guatemalan survivor of government genocide wrote a fictionalized "memoir." While social scientists and journalists have an obligation to write their interpretation of "reality" as accurately as possible in view of the data they have available and to acknowledge when "distortions" are deliberately constructed to "improve" the narrative, it is only when called to task, that the fact or fiction of a memoir is made into "an issue" and the writer called to task. This does not excuse Frey's sloppiness in not acknowledging that some facts were invented or distorted. However, I think the rationalization he might think to employ, that "everyone does it," would probably turn out to be truer than many would like to admit if every successful memoir were currently subject to scrutiny.
| Submitted by: | Joseph Brant 1/19/2006 1:15:17 PM PT |
| Location: | Nashville |
| Occupation: | bookseller |
How is it possible for so many writers to take offense at Frey's fabrications when they themselves, I would imagine, should be offering nothing if not empathy -- otherwise, how is it possible to accurately recall direct quotes from years, decades in the past, such that so many non-fiction writers (yes, even memoirists) do now? I dare say, the 5% that Frey claims are in dispute is an amount that any other memoirist would consider negligible if he/she was called on those conversations that appear so crystal clear on their pages. Is honesty-in-writing a zero sum game, or are we all just delighted to have found a legitimate reason to be offended by the successful among us?
| Submitted by: | Betty Monthei 1/19/2006 10:21:39 AM PT |
| Location: | Fairbanks |
| Occupation: | Writer |
I would never have bought the book had it not been a memoir, and changing names and dates and compressing times or events (which is what is covered in the normal disclaimer for memoir) is quite different than fabricating/fictionalizing your past as it is allegged that James Frey did. I expect memoir to be the truth as far as memory allows.
| Submitted by: | Sarah 1/18/2006 11:30:01 AM PT |
| Location: | New York, NY |
I think we are missing a very important point that The Smoking Gun article was trying to impress: Frey didn't just mis-remember or embellish (which everyone who has a grandfather knows is a natural part of telling your life story) he actually went back and tried to expunge the police records that existed! He knew exactly what he was doing and where he fabricated parts of his life. This is not a simple case of telling a fish-story, this is blatant lying for profit.
| Submitted by: | Deborah Robson 1/18/2006 10:11:29 AM PT |
| Location: | Colorado |
| Occupation: | Writer and publisher |
This whole issue goes very deep into a society where people frequently tie the identities of actors to those of the characters they play, spend fantasy evenings watching "reality" shows, and exercise vicariously from the bleachers. Storytelling has value, regardless of whether its substance is actual or fictional. And yet. . . .
It is more demanding on the writer to effectively tell a tale as close to the truth as is humanly possible, and to carefully state where lines are being crossed without losing narrative momentum.
I've got no problem with writers who don't want to work that hard. They tell good stories that I often enjoy reading. I do want their work correctly labeled: "nonfiction novel," "based on real events," or even a disclaimer in small print: "Events, people, and other details have been changed."
Sara, you say, "But memoirists aren't journalists, they're narcissists. They don't claim to tell the whole story; they're only really interested in their own." Sometimes that’s true—in the case of James Frey’s book that’s obviously the case.
But it is not always true. Some people who write memoirs work hard to get at a larger truth about the human condition using what can potentially be the most powerful tool available: examination of their own lives, done with intelligence and unflinching honesty. This approach can produce incredible literature when it is done skillfully.
Because it is possible to write that well, I feel cheated when I find out that a writer has not been true to his or her own experience UNLESS I am invited into sharing a story that is clearly identified as part reality and part fantasy.
| Submitted by: | Mary Moore 1/17/2006 11:45:03 AM PT |
| Location: | Miami, Fl. |
| Occupation: | librarian |
Teenagers tend to believe everything they hear or read. They say, "It says it's a true story." As a librarian, I am constantly saying "Know your source" There is a difference between a true fact book and a book based on a true incident. The latter can take one fact and embellish the rest. When, someone says this is my memoir, I'm expecting a book as true as possible. Otherwise, say this is my memoir as I would like it to be. This is just one more incidence of our society refusing to know the difference between trueth and fiction. Don't lie, children are watching.
| Submitted by: | John Crutcher 1/17/2006 9:43:23 AM PT |
| Location: | New York |
| Occupation: | Publisher |
It is, to this reader (who has spent his adult life in the book world, first as a bookseller,
then in publishing) either astonishing or darkly amusing that Sara Nelson, Frey's
publishers, and others choose to rationalize publishing clear lies as truths. Frey didn't
shade the truth, he fabricated his own story. He seems not to have mis-remembered, but
created experiences from thin air.
| Submitted by: | Larry Portzline 1/16/2006 3:16:41 PM PT |
| Location: | Harrisburg, PA |
| Occupation: | Writer |
It's a sad day when the "Queen of All Media," Oprah Winfrey, throws her
considerable support behind an author who misrepresented himself on her
program and to millions of readers. I guess what she's telling us is that it's
also okay to lie on a job application, as long as you get a decent paycheck out
of it; that it's perfectly acceptable to cheat on a test if it means getting a good
grade; and that it's not such a bad thing to deceive people, as long as you
make someone else feel better.
Oprah's credibility is shot, as far as I'm concerned. How can her viewers ever
believe again that the people she has on her show are actually who they say
they are? She had the opportunity on "Larry King Live" to stand up for herself,
for her fans, and for The Truth -- in front of the entire nation, at a time when we
could really USE some truth. But she didn't. Instead, she danced all around
the issue like so many other powerful people do when their highest priority
becomes covering their own rear ends. And that, to me, is even worse than
what James Frey did.
Frey is yet another in a parade of fabulists who threaten the book industry and
the media in general. It's perfectly acceptable for the author of a memoir to
condense time, to create composite characters, to retell events through the
haze of subjective memory, and to express strong opinions throughout. The
genre virtually requires it. What is downright unforgivable, however, is lying
for the sake of selling books. This includes fabricating what's IN the book, and
then sustaining the lie to PROMOTE the book.
Even more insidious is what books like "A Million Little Pieces" do to the
concept of truth in our society. It's hard enough to distinguish between fact
and fiction these days when some in the public eye insist on cramming their
own personal version of the truth down your throat. The message they send
is, "My truth is the REAL truth, and the only one that matters," even if they don't
believe it themselves. And that certainly seems to be the case with Frey.
The truth is the truth. Facts are facts. If you want to bend the truth for artistic
purposes, just say so. We'll come along for the ride. But if you invent people
and places and events and call them facts -- in books, on TV, in newspapers
and magazines -- then you should be beaten to a pulp and hanged in a public
square where everyone can walk by and spit on your rotting corpse.
I mean that metaphorically, of course.
Or do I?
It's so hard to tell these days.
| Submitted by: | Amy S. King 1/16/2006 9:27:48 AM PT |
| Location: | PA |
| Occupation: | author |
It occurred to me last night what it must feel like to be the writer who is at #11 or #12 on the NYT NON FICTION bestseller list right now. They could say they made the top ten if it wasn't for two fiction books taking up space above them. That's pretty unfair, don't you think? For writers supporting Frey, try and feel what that must be like. I bet your mind might change instantly if you were #11.
Writing is a hard business and often feels unfair when it isn't. But this issue - especially since many other complete fabrications are coming to light in Frey's book - is not going to 'feel right' until someone finds a referee who is willing to call the shots rather than shrug and anylize. Laughing it off as one of many embellished memoirs is getting us nowhere. In fact, that in itself is another lie. It's not an embellished memoir. It's a novel. Put it on the right list and let #11 move to #9. Then say - Hooray for #9! You made it! Great job!
Next »
Post a comment Return to article View other article discussions
