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January 13, 2006
A Million Little Lies
James Frey's book "A Million Little Pieces" is written as a non-fiction memoir, except that it's a work of fiction, as The Smoking Gun(TSG) has pointed out. Frey has lawyered up, and is now threatening The Smoking Gun, as demonstrated by this first-year -law school-caliber letter to TSG.
The big question seems to center around whether it really matters if he embellished or even fabricated portions of the story out of whole cloth. If he's a writer, what difference does it make if the story is true or not? Perhaps it's best to let James Frey speak in this instance, as to whether true and veracity are meaningful.
2006-01-13 01:34:42 AM Skeuomorph [TotalFark]
The problem with the whole "so what if he just made it up, the story is an inspiration" argument is best stated by slate.com's Meghan O'Rourke, pointing out Frey's over-the-top hypocricy:
When a former rehab memberand a rock star shares with the inmates a confession of his own outsized consumption of alcohol and drugs, Frey, infuriated by how "sincerely" the speech is made, imagines beating him up: "I would tell him that if I ever heard of him spewing his bullshiat fantasies in Public again, I would cut off his precious hair, scar his precious lips, and take all of his goddamn gold records and shove them straight up his ass."
Substitute "bestsellers" for "gold records" and apply this to Frey. O'Rourke continues:
[Frey] was busy providing his own sound bite: "The truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I am remembered at all. Remember the truth."
Posted by Peenie Wallie on January 13, 2006 at 2:44 AM
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