I’m not sure if this is sign of mental instability or pure genius, but our friend James Frey (author of the memoirs A Million Little Totally Made-Up Pieces and Leonard: My Inspirational Best Friend from Jail Though I Wasn’t Really in Jail) has a blog and voicemail, and he is urging you to leave him a message:
Just call (917) 720-7510
(Be cool Be Nasty Say whatever you want)
Yes, he is inviting abuse, and if you wish you can even listen to what everyone says: http://bigjimindustries.com/saynow2.php
But the disturbing part is that most people are calling in to say nice things like “you are the literary voice of this century” and “despite the critics, your books rock.”
Of course, all of this underway to create a groundswell of interest in his first new third novel:
To be fair, this is the century that gave us steroids in baseball, Alberto Gonzales’s Congressional testimony, Ashley Simpson on Saturday Night Live, and Jayson Blair. So James Frey quite likely is the century’s “literary voice,” when you think about it.
I might be a bit jaded, but this doesn’t surprise me. And it’s keeping form with a proud tradition in popular culture: reward the screwups.
I mean, heck, Monica Lewinsky got to host Saturday Night Live. Her credentials for doing so? She gave oral sex to the prez.
[...] week the folks at Brevity posted regarding nonfiction pariah James Frey’s recent addition to his website to get ready for the [...]
How can people be upset about there not being enough truth in a memoir? It’s like being upset that there is not enough made-up stuff in fiction. In my opinion, Fry’s Memoir is a study in voice–it is not easy to move a plot forward with disonance–and Fry’s attempts are admirable. I think all the “frenzy” resulted from Oprah not doing her homework and Fry not stating that A Million Little Pieces is “BASED on a true story.” I can tell you one truth about Fry: I grew up one street over from him and his everyone called him “Jimminy” as a little boy! (Not very exciting, huh?)
PJ
I don’t think it’s a matter of “not enough truth”; it’s the “too many lies” that a lot of us have trouble with.