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Semi-Fiction

Inside James Frey's A MILLION LITTLE PIECES controversy

By Nina L. Diamond

James Frey’s best-selling, Oprah Book Club pick, A Million Little Pieces (Nan Talese/Doubleday) was published in 2003 as a memoir, and became the top non-fiction book of 2005. Then all hell broke loose during the first week of 2006 when TheSmokingGun.com announced that they had investigated and found that significant events in the book had not actually happened.

The publisher announced that new printings of the book will include an author’s note of some kind.

The past few days have resembled the kind of definition-bending free-for-all usually reserved for political scandals, as all parties involved scramble to cover their butts, justify, and in general act like people act when they’re trying to avoid being sued.

Frey, his mother, and Oprah (through a phone-in during Frey’s January 11th appearance on Larry King Live) contend that certain liberties can taken in a memoir, and that the message and spirit of the book is more important than its individual facts, even if they turn out to be fiction.

“I am disappointed by this controversy surrounding A Million Little Pieces because I rely on the publishers to define the category that a book falls within and also the authenticity of the work,” Oprah said on Larry King Live. “Although some of the facts have been questioned…the underlying message of redemption in James Frey’s memoir still resonates with me…Whether or not the car’s wheels rolled up on the sidewalk or whether he hit the police officer or didn’t hit the police officer is irrelevant to me. What is relevant is that he was a drug addict who spent years in turmoil…and to take that message to save other people and allow them to save themselves…This is much ado about nothing, because if you have read the book…I don’t know what percentage, but so much of story, the majority of the story is inside the clinic.”

On Larry King Live, Frey repeatedly noted that his lies (of course, he refrained from using that word, preferring, instead, ”embellishments”) only comprised 18 pages of the book’s total 432 pages.

“That falls comfortably within the realm of what’s appropriate for a memoir,” Frey told King. He should be judged, he believes, and apparently Oprah concurs, by the vast number of pages in which he told the truth, and inspired others, rather than the few pages in which he lied. But, of course, again, he didn’t use the word lie.

I’d like to see that defense in a courtroom: “But, your honor, I should be judged by all the years in my life in which I behaved, not the five minutes when I robbed that bank.”

I’m thinking that Martha Stewart could’ve used this defense, too. The government contended that she lied. By Frey’s logic, Martha’s lawyers missed an opportunity to argue that she should’ve been judged by all those years that she told the truth, not that one minute when the government believed she lied.

Those who support Frey, including the author, himself, apparently believe that a memoir can play fast and loose with the facts and the truth (Frey stated in the King interview “…that in certain cases things were toned up, in certain cases things were toned down…”) because memory is subjective and a memoir shouldn’t be held to the same standards as an autobiography.

Earlier in the week, Frey’s publishing house released a statement of support, and on January 12, the night after Frey’s Larry King Live appearance (the only interview the author claims he’ll give on the controversy), Frey’s publisher, Nan Talese, appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.

“We do not check author’s facts,” she said. “The authors present their books and they guarantee they are truth.”

Unlike some magazines and newspapers, publishing houses do not employ fact checkers. It’s standard practice to include a clause in a non-fiction author’s book contract that guarantees the book’s authenticity. Frey told Larry King that the book had been shopped “as a novel and it was turned down by a lot of publishers. When Nan Talese purchased the book, I’m not sure if they knew what they were going to publish it as. We talked about what to publish it as. And they thought the best thing to do was publish it as a memoir.”

Publisher Nan Talese told Anderson Cooper that “it is totally untrue” that Frey submitted his book to her as fiction. “In the entire publishing procedure, fiction was never mentioned.”

When Cooper asked if the book had been presented to her as non-fiction, Nan Talese replied, “It was presented to me as a manuscript. Usually, one doesn’t label things.”

I’m sure that will be news to the industry, to agents, authors, and editors who deal every day with clearly defined manuscripts. It is not anywhere near common practice for anyone to submit a manuscript to a publisher and not say whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.

Talese’s explanation continued to unravel. “I guess I would say it’s a novel, if it was, but it was simply to say it was – no, it was a memoir of a man who had fierce drug addiction and overcame it.”

Huh?

Like the author and Oprah, publisher Nan Talese wasn’t particular troubled by Frey’s lies about specific incidents in the book from an editorial perspective. “They are irrelevant to the essence of the book,” she told CNN’s Cooper.

Her husband, acclaimed author Gay Talese, also a guest on the show, did not share his wife’s views.

“I believe that the credibility of the whole story depends upon the total effort of the writer to be responsible, even in matters that might not be relevant to the overall story…I believe you have to be 100 percent accountable…And I don’t think there’s any tolerance for kind of a minimum or minimalist attitude with regard to maximum credibility.”

Frey had told Larry King that “the genre of memoir is one that’s very new and the boundaries of it had not been established yet.”

That was news to Gay Talese. On whether an author can take liberties with the truth in a memoir, he told Anderson Cooper: “You’re very accountable, if you’re a nonfiction writer. And I don’t want to denigrate anyone who pretends they’re a nonfiction writer, but don’t seem to subscribe to the tenets of nonfiction, which is to be very, very, very accurate, even if it’s a memoir. Memoir does not mean that you can be at liberty with the truth or with your own research on yourself.”

Carol Radziwill, a journalist and the author of What Remains: A Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love, whose own appearance on Oprah had just been rebroadcast that day, took part in Cooper’s conversation with Gay and Nan Talese, and was adamant about the importance of adhering to the facts in nonfiction and the memoir genre.

“I don’t think the definition of memoir has ever been in dispute. It’s a true account of the author’s life,” she said. “…the facts are the facts. And you can’t insert yourself into scenes where you were never involved.”

When Nan Talese said that the disputed incidents in Frey’s book “could be excised from the book. It makes no difference to the book,” clearly missing the point that the fact that the author lied is what makes a difference, Anderson Cooper said, “…as a reader, to me personally, it makes me doubt his…”

Simultaneously, Carol Radziwill responded to Nan Talese with an exasperated, “Outrageous!”

Among the “embellishments” Frey invented, are two specific incidents getting a lot of attention. He claimed in the book to have had a violent altercation with a police officer, and to have been brought up on multiple charges for which he served prison time. However, TheSmokingGun’s investigation revealed that Frey didn’t have an altercation with the police officer, was not brought up on the charges he claimed in the book, and did not serve prison time in that incident. Frey was cooperative when arrested. He was only charged with driving under the influence, and released on a $733 bond.

The other incident is one in which Frey claims that in his youth he played a major role in the events that directly led to a friend’s death in a car accident, and was vilified by the whole town. TheSmokingGun’s investigation revealed that the friend’s family said Frey had absolutely nothing to do with the tragic event. The town, apparently, didn’t turn on him, either.

Frey’s memoir is a riveting account of the horrors of his years of drug and alcohol addiction, and his ultimate recovery. Regarding the author’s invention of the police altercation, multiple charges, and resulting prison time, Anderson Cooper said, “If in fact he’s pretending to be this badass…this…crack-slinging…police-punching guy, you know, all of a sudden he’s not. He’s this guy who brings his mom to Larry King.”

Frey’s publisher, Nan Talese, whose imprint of Doubleday, under the Random House umbrella, reportedly paid the author a $50,000 advance for A Million Little Pieces, responded, “Here is a person from the age of 10, for 14 years, has been on alcohol and drugs…perhaps he felt that he needed to make himself worse…if James exaggerated, which he now says he did, these two instances of his being really horrible, it is a mistake. He apologized for it, or he didn’t apologize, but he acknowledged it. The thing is, the thing that I’m saying is that, without those two scenes, I would have published the book.”

Of course, the matter at hand isn’t whether the book would’ve had the same editorial depth or emotional impact without those scenes. By all accounts, this powerful book has plenty of other raw content. The matter at hand is that the author, James Frey, lied.

Since, over time, we’ve learned that, unfortunately, plenty of other authors have “embellished”(Frey’s favorite word used to avoid the dreaded “lied”) in their memoirs, maybe it’s time the publishing industry moved memoir out of its non-fiction classification.

Maybe the industry can create a new classification for memoirs and any other genres in which authors prefer to have some wiggle room regarding truth: Semi-fiction.

At least readers will know what they’re getting.

* * * * *

Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.

Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.