The James Frey incident had a HUGE impact on me. I read that book before Oprah championed it, devoured it, absolutely loved it, taught it in an adult-ed English course where it had a big impact on a lot of the students. I was really shaken by the Smoking Gun revelations.
Later (I guess the following school year?) I wanted to talk about this whole thing, about memoir and the concept of truth and lies in writing, to one of my classes, and I wanted to show the Oprah/James Frey interview where she confronted him. You are right when you say it's "oddly difficult" to find a clip of this, and that's not just because it was nearly two decades ago -- it was almost impossible to find it online even at the time, and even in the early YouTube era when EVERYTHING seemed to be on YouTube somewhere, I couldn't find it. I think Oprah's people wanted it scrubbed from memory.
Honestly, all this time afterwards, I still feel weird about that book. Maybe part of it is the feeling of having been "taken in."
The "Pittacus Lore"/Number Four thing is interesting too ... after the debacle of the memoirs, Frey tried to rebrand as what he'd always wanted to be anyway - a writer of serious literary fiction a la Jonathan Franzen etc. (Apparently he originally wanted A Million Little Pieces to be a novel and it was Nan Talese who convinced him it should be marketed as a memoir? That's the story I recall hearing at the time). But his Big Literary Novel comeback, Bright Shiny Morning, was not a big hit (you can read my review here, if curious: https://compulsiveoverreader.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/bright-shiny-morning-by-james-frey/). His next idea was to hire a stable of young writers for crap pay to churn out YA bestsellers under his "Full Fathom Five" imprint ... which I think is where the Pittacus Lore books came from (https://nymag.com/arts/books/features/69474/).
Since then, things have been pretty quiet on the James Frey front. But in retrospect it really feels like the beginning of an era of questioning what qualifies as "true" ... a question that's only getting more difficult to answer.
Thanks so much for sharing! I think, especially as educated people who value critical thinking, it can be existentially destabilizing when we're duped. Hank Green has talked a lot about this recently as well - how we all have biases and are less likely to fact-check things that agree with those biases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W92bjv8fNTI
When I taught that class, we also did a unit on autobiographical fiction - both of the novels we read (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Obasan) were fantastic, and dealt with important real-world topics. I find the insistence on telling a story as a memoir, rather than as a novel heavily inspired by the writer's life, to be an interesting impulse - it kind of speaks to a lack of faith in the ability of novels to communicate capital-T Truth.
Wow! Everything you wrote resonates with me. Wish this piece had a wider audience. So timely and important.
Thank you! Feel free to share it with others!
The James Frey incident had a HUGE impact on me. I read that book before Oprah championed it, devoured it, absolutely loved it, taught it in an adult-ed English course where it had a big impact on a lot of the students. I was really shaken by the Smoking Gun revelations.
Later (I guess the following school year?) I wanted to talk about this whole thing, about memoir and the concept of truth and lies in writing, to one of my classes, and I wanted to show the Oprah/James Frey interview where she confronted him. You are right when you say it's "oddly difficult" to find a clip of this, and that's not just because it was nearly two decades ago -- it was almost impossible to find it online even at the time, and even in the early YouTube era when EVERYTHING seemed to be on YouTube somewhere, I couldn't find it. I think Oprah's people wanted it scrubbed from memory.
Honestly, all this time afterwards, I still feel weird about that book. Maybe part of it is the feeling of having been "taken in."
The "Pittacus Lore"/Number Four thing is interesting too ... after the debacle of the memoirs, Frey tried to rebrand as what he'd always wanted to be anyway - a writer of serious literary fiction a la Jonathan Franzen etc. (Apparently he originally wanted A Million Little Pieces to be a novel and it was Nan Talese who convinced him it should be marketed as a memoir? That's the story I recall hearing at the time). But his Big Literary Novel comeback, Bright Shiny Morning, was not a big hit (you can read my review here, if curious: https://compulsiveoverreader.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/bright-shiny-morning-by-james-frey/). His next idea was to hire a stable of young writers for crap pay to churn out YA bestsellers under his "Full Fathom Five" imprint ... which I think is where the Pittacus Lore books came from (https://nymag.com/arts/books/features/69474/).
Since then, things have been pretty quiet on the James Frey front. But in retrospect it really feels like the beginning of an era of questioning what qualifies as "true" ... a question that's only getting more difficult to answer.
Thanks so much for sharing! I think, especially as educated people who value critical thinking, it can be existentially destabilizing when we're duped. Hank Green has talked a lot about this recently as well - how we all have biases and are less likely to fact-check things that agree with those biases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W92bjv8fNTI
When I taught that class, we also did a unit on autobiographical fiction - both of the novels we read (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Obasan) were fantastic, and dealt with important real-world topics. I find the insistence on telling a story as a memoir, rather than as a novel heavily inspired by the writer's life, to be an interesting impulse - it kind of speaks to a lack of faith in the ability of novels to communicate capital-T Truth.