jumping into the frey

I'd been really trying to sit out the whole "A Million Little Pieces" debate/debacle, but after yesterday's Oprah show where she pulled the rug out from under Frey, I just wanted to put down a few thoughts...

To begin, I've got to say that I suspected Frey was a fraud since I first heard about him and the book. I thought the ridiculous portrait he painted of himself was something that even Charles Bukowski—even at the height of his drunken heydays—would have disavowed.

And I of course read the Smoking Gun piece with the usual delight that comes with watching a paper tiger get crumpled into an origami boulder and tossed into the trash. But yesterday's drubbing of Frey on Oprah, I feel, went too far. First of all, it reminded me of Hal Holbrook's line in All The President's Men when he was berating Woodward for letting Haldeman slip away: "You've got people feeling sorry for him. I didn't think that was possible." I mean, Oprah scolding Frey like he was a child for telling lies to a grown-up is totally ridiculous when the lies had been there all along, and anyone who considered his story for two seconds would have asked a whole lot of basic questions it seems Oprah never thought to ask (Wanted in three states? Really, can I see the arrest warrants?). But of course Oprah didn't ask those questions, namely because she believes much more in exclamation points than in questions marks.

Frey's publisher was the same way; something came to them and they wanted to BELIEVE. More than that, they wanted to have something sensational to publish (and, of course, they wanted some big sales). And everyone knows that sensation sells, and there was a whole lot of the sensational in Frey's story. It just so happens it was all fake. In small doses, publishers often turn a blind eye to the occasional burst of hyperbole in an author's biography. In fact, the short “about the author” bio for Truman Capote’s first novel makes him sound an awful lot like Jack Kerouac; within a few years, all those claims would be removed from future bios. But at the time, the notion of Capote as a tough, worldly guy—gulp—helped sell him to readers, and that was just a short bio at the end of a work of fiction. Frey’s book was basically a string of those kinds of lies stretched out to book length, and it certainly worked in selling himself to readers.

Also, Frey's book was never an under-the-radar title that Oprah "discovered" and rescued from obscurity; Doubleday had pushed the thing quite ardently, and tried very hard to make it a hit (and finally they did). If they would have asked the author some hard-hitting questions about the book along the way, rather than putting that effort into marketing it, then they wouldn't be in the trouble they're now in. But then again, it’s hard to think straight with the noise of all those cash registers clinking in the background...

Comments

[Sam]

And now he's been dropped by his agent!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060201/ap_en_ot/disputed_memoir;_ylt=AtRMtA170ZmW7Ia1NkLGrTQDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl