Freying Frying — Bookfraud's Inferno

Update: Some very angry readers are suing Frey & Co. for fraud. It's enough to make you buy the book, or join the bar.

Update Part 2!: Frey's agent has disavowed the boy's claims that "A Million Little Pieces" was shopped first as a novel, saying Frey peddled it as a "true as shit!" memoir the entire time. She then dumped him as a client. Perhaps she doesn't deserve a place at the bottom of the pit, just three-fourths of the way down instead...

The last thing I will ever write about James Frey (I hope and pray):

Last night over dinner, I entered into an extended conversation of who was to blame in this whole James Frey debacle, and who was culpable besides the author himself.

At least one suspect is Frey's publisher, who got a major spanking on Oprah Winfrey’s show, as part of her public denunciation of the lies in Frey's book, which has sold more copies in a couple of years than “The Sound and the Fury” has in over 70, which brings a wicked smile to all of us Faulkner fans that at least Bill won the Nobel Prize.

Oprah (for she is One identified by a first name) had promoted “A Million Little Pieces” for her Book Club, defended the man on Larry King, and finally got wise following a cascade of bad publicity from the professional class of snark-meisters. (I’m sure that my reptilian, status-seeking thoughts on the matter ultimately changed her mind). Frey, for reasons only attributable to a masochism or neediness so deep that he’d do anything for fame, went back on Oprah’s show, where she made Frey feel more uncomfortable than the root canal without anesthesia that he never had. You almost felt sorry for the guy.


A writer's Paradise?

The regular readers of this space, all three of you, know that I am obsessed with Dante’s Inferno, so much that it made me think of conversion once or twice. Since I am convinced that the major players in this fiasco have a special place in the crucible of utter damnation — and since the dinner conversation convinced me that many, many people were involved — I felt it would be fitting to end this discussion with putting the particulars in their proper place, which is to say, their proper place Dante’s nine circles of Hell.

Abandon all hope ye who read from here.

First Circle/Limbo– Oprah Winfrey

She gets rescued from the burning pit with her angry renunciation on TV. This place is reserved for pre-Christ Jews, Greeks, Romans, and the like. Homer, Horace, and Ovid are hanging out in Limbo, so Oprah has plenty of candidates for expanding her Book Club. I would like to think that Limbo holds out the possibility of Paradise, and I don’t think Oprah has to worry about getting her wings.

Second Circle /The Lustful — The gullible public

The reading public’s desire for a book that relates stories of pain and redemption has become so all-encompassing, that the more incredible the story, the more incredulous the public has become. We’re lusting for redemption, and we make the same mistake over, and over, and over. (See LeRoy, JT; Pelzer, Dave; "Nasdijj;" Khouri, Norma). It’s almost enough to make me want to write a book about my addiction to heroin and the gutter-splashing violence that marked my youth, adolescence, and adulthood, and how I turned it all around. I might even make you believe it’s true.

Third Circle/The Gluttonous — Larry King

Hello, this is Larry King. Tonight we’ve got James Frey and his mother on to refute charges that he lied in his memoirs, “A Billion Little Pieces.” I’ll ask penetrating questions that will get right to the heart of the matter. Maybe my fifth wife will call in. Maybe Angie will. Did I ever tell you I dated Angie Dickinson?

Hello, Omaha, Nebraska, you’re on Larry King. I don't know if James Frey smokes, but I’ve stopped smoking since my quintuple bypass. Did I ever say that once you have bypass surgery you’re likely to cry at a moment’s notice? Instead of smoking, I love the great taste of Cheetos, from Frito Lay. Jim, and I hope you don't mind me calling you that, did you eat Cheetos when you were trying to get the monkey off your back? Maybe that was what you vomited on yourself before you got on that plane. Do you like Cheetos, Mrs. Frey? I started out a Fritos man myself until they got rid of the Frito Bandito.

Jim, when you put the world “Pieces” in the title, were you thinking about bricks or tile? I’ve got a newly tiled backsplash in my CNN bathroom, real mosaic glass. Also, when you were in rehab, did you ever think about taking up knitting? I've found it a relaxing and refreshing way to spend the time. Hello, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, you’re on Larry King. Hold on, I think we got my good friend Oprah on the line. Is it getting hot in here, or just me?

Fourth Circle/The Avaricious & the Prodigal — Book Reviewers

Aside from a few skeptical souls, book reviewers jumped en mass on “A Million Little Pieces,” riding it like the bandwagon they knew it would become. Many latched on this book and ended up in the rarified air of Blurbland (Which kind of surprises me, because if you want attention as a book critic, you need to be brilliant and lofty, like James Wood, or angry and fire-breathing, like Dale Peck). Just a few more questions here and there — or, heaven forbid, a little reporting on the part of these people — and the mess would have been avoided a full year before Her Oprahness made Frey a millionaire.

Fifth Circle/ The Wrathful and the Sullen — Cultural Critics

This perhaps is the most apt placement of souls, as cultural critics make a living off being high and mighty, never feeling humbled by the Almighty (See Fraud, Book). Not just book reviewers, these folks write about Culture and What I Think About It. From the lofty pretense of the New York Review of Books to the street fighters on Fox News, cultural critics will be jumping on Mr. Frey’s poor judgment as another way to unleash their wrath and sound their righteousness. It’s the kind of thing that both the Left and Right can denounce – lefties can say that Frey reflects acceptance of the fantasy world of George W. Bush and not the reality-based world, righties can say it reflects the permissivness and relativistic worldview of Bill Clinton and his lot, where everything goes for a buck or a toke.

Sixth Circle/Heretics — Nan Talese, Publisher, and Sean McDonald, Editor

I’ve never met Nan Talese, and I’m sure she’s a mild-mannered, super-intelligent person who would is as likely to commit heresy as I am to Dirty Dance with Rush Limbaugh. In addition, her husband Gay (no jokes) is one of the great New Journalists of the ‘60s, and authored perhaps the best celebrity profile ever written, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” And boy, did Oprah let her have it already.

I have also never met Sean McDonald, and know nothing about him. I’m sure he’s a hard-working, talented fellow as well.

In short, Nan Talese nor Sean McDonald doesn’t deserve to bunk with The Heretical, but what happened merits a long descent near the bottom of Hell, if only for a two-week holiday. Talese allowed a book so obviously fiction to be published as a memoir, but she went to the media time and again to defend Frey’s book, saying that it was legit because it was based on his “recollections.” This just prolonged the pain.

If I have to explain the guilt of McDonald, the book’s editor, you, too have a farm, and on your farm you’re not read-ing, E-I-E-I-O.

Seventh Circle/The Violent — Book publicists

It is at this point that I will willfully insert my experience in the publishing world. Though I don’t have a novel to publicize, I can tell you unequivocally that the Seventh Circle is crawling with publicists , who are yelling at anybody in earshot about the latest Candace Bushnell or Mitch Albom masterwork, ignoring books with literary merit that actually need marketing support. They gave James Frey the publicity he needed to get his pack of lies before critics and the public, not to mention inclusion into a certain book club.

Eighth Circle/Fraud —James Frey

Another self-explaining guest room at the Hotel Hell. I’ve already ripped James Frey a new one, and I feel almost guilty putting him here, for I gather his life will be a Hell on Earth henceforth. (My dinner conversant and I discussed the possibility that Frey may have repeated his Frauds so many times, he might believe them).

As a literary note, the Dante’s Eighth Circle has several sublevels, with special accommodations for Seducers, Panderers, and other such types. The bottom three sublevels are (in order), Fraudulent Counselors, Gossipers, and at the very bottom, Falsifiers of Metals, Persons, Coins, and yes, Words.

Ninth Circle/Treachery — Frey’s Literary Agent

(I’ve Googled this person, but I’m not listing her name because I fear retribution from the Big Agent in the Sky, or that mine will read this.)

For me, this is the coolest circle, where Satan himself resides, masticating endlessly on Cassius, Brutus, and Judas Iscariot. This is precisely where the agent is gonna spend the afterlife. You see, Dante reserves the harshest judgment on those who betray their kin, homeland, hosts, and benefactors.

The agent betrayed James Frey — clearly, Frey is her benefactor, as she took 15 percent of his money and 20 percent for foreign rights — by allowing his fictional tale of addiction, violence, root canals, and redemption to magically morph into a memoir. Like alchemy. Personally, I can’t vouch for the Agent’s role in all this, as it is tied to the Editor and Publisher. However, instead of providing wise counsel, the Agent pushed this fraudulent tale through the process, first (supposedly) shopping it as a novel before hitting the right note at Doubleday.

As I understand it, in the ninth circle they hand out those personal portable fans, but you can never get batteries.

_________

I’m all written out on this subject, and sorry if I came across as a pedantic gasbag, which I am, admittedly.

However, if you made it all the way to the bottom, I will buy you a copy of “A Million Little Pieces” and hand deliver it to your door, a copy that I pick from dozens that will be stacked up in the Discount Bin at your local bookstore.

Entrapped

I fully intended to write a post on Frederick Exley's "A Fan's Notes," a brilliant fiction-as-memoir, to show a counterpoint to the book fraud "A Million Little Pieces." But it was not to be.

You see, all weekend I spent parked in front of my iMac, hitting buttons and clicking away. Lest you might think I was engaged in productive activity -- that is, in writing -- let me disabuse you of that optimism. No, I was vying for world domination in a computer game called "Rise of Nations," and the last time I checked, I was getting walloped by the Aztecs, the Chinese, and the French, a veritable multi-cultural ass-kicking that would make the most cynical left-winger proud.


Some nerve

In fact, I have not written much the past couple of weeks, and it has interfered with my ability to post stories to this blog. This time, my excuse is not depression, procrastination, or any other state of being ending in "-tion." Instead, this is some beastie called "ulnar entrapment," which, if you know what it is, means you have either suffered from it or are an orthopedic surgeon, which makes me worry about how the nation's physicians are spending their free time.

Ulnar entrapment, or "cubital tunnel syndrome," is a painful little condition involving the nerves in the elbow. These nerves run all the way to your hand, and when you suffer from ulnar entrapment, your pinkie and half of your ring finger (yes, just half the finger) go numb. For the past three weeks, it has felt like those fingers are suffering from a combination of falling asleep and frostbite.

All this makes typing a painful proposition. Depending on what expert to believe, I am to extend my arms while typing, or keep the elbows to my sides, or pick my toes with the bad hand. It doesn't matter -- I can only type for a few minutes at a time.

Which really sucks ass.

I don't know my ulnar got entrapped, except that I woke up on New Year's Day feeling like my hand had fallen alseep and wasn't waking up. I have foolishly searched online for treatments, and discovered a hypocondriac's dream. I read of horror stories involving misdiagnoses, botched surgery, permanent damage. In case the condition does not improve of its own accord, the alternative is a maybe-it-will-work procedure that entails six weeks in a splint. Which is six weeks I can't take off from work, sadly.

Yes, I have been to my physician, who seems to think it will go away on its own; another doctor, a specialist, is of the same opinion. But it may take weeks, or even months -- nerve injuries are notoriously slow to heal.

This may be the case, but since my job (and not just my writing) involves a keyboard, this is of little comfort. It isn't so bad when I don't have to either hit the "Shift" or "Tab" button, or type "a" or "s." Since my name has both an "a" and an "s," you might see why this is a problem, not to mention about 50 percent of the English language.

I really don't know what I've done to deserve this. My skeleton is a catalog of woe: two knee operations, a herniated disc in my back, a recently discovered condition in my shoulder requiring surgery, and now this. It's really quite demoralizing. I need new joints and fast.

Got Demerol?

James Frey: Fake It 'Till You Make It (as a Writer)

Literary hoaxes have a long and distinguished lineage. Writers in desperate need of attention, money, and fame will do pretty much anything. I admit it: us writers can be total whores.

There are the hoaxes that are stories of myth, passing off fabulist tales as the truth, a la Marco Polo or even the Bible. There are books by invented writers, books that exaggerate and conflate, and books that alter history in amusing or disgusting ways.

And then there are out-and-out con jobs. Which brings us to James Frey.

Frey, as you probably know, has been outed as a serial exaggerator (to put it mildly) in his memoir, "A Million Little Pieces." And, as you probably already know, the gut-wrenching tale of addiction and inspiring road to recovery has sold millions of books, following Oprah Winfrey's endorsement.


A novel book

It's not surprising to find out that Frey had first peddled his book as a novel, and was rejected by 17 publishers (do I know the feeling) before being accepted on the stipulation that it would be presented as memoir. Frey agreed and the rest is history.

There seems to be something in the literary air these days about bogus memoirs. Norma Khouri's "Honor Lost -- Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan" told the case of how the love between a Muslim woman and a Christian man resulted in the woman's father cutting her up into little pieces. Some enterprising reporters in Australia, where Khouri had moved, did some sleuthing, and discovered that the best-selling book was a pack o' lies.


Another writer, Dave Pelzer, writes of a depraved mother in a series of books that detail horrific abuse during his childhood. According to a New York Times magazine article, nobody else in his family ever saw or experienced such abuse. The "facts" in his books can't be confirmed, and there's scant evidence backing up Pelzer's claims. But it's an inspiring tale of redemption, so nobody seems to mind much.

These are all first-person narratives that purport to portray God-honest, no-b.s. truth. It's amusing to a writer of fiction to see how these supposedly true-life books really aren't different than your typical novel, except if they were marketed as such, nobody would read them.

Go into any Creative Writing 101 class, and you'll hear at least one student, after being criticized for writing a scene that's pedestrian or just plain boring, will say, "But that's how it happened." They just take what they've seen in life, and write it up as a story.

In fiction, you get to lie. You're expected to lie. An invented tale can portray larger truths other than the details of a given work.

But with fiction, there is no "authenticity" standard like in non-fiction. This isn't to say that you can't expect exaggeration in your typical first-person non-fiction narrative. Celebrity A's autobiography says that he slept with still-in-the-closet Celebrity B or Movie Director C having a casting couch audition with B-list Starlet D.

But there's a huge difference between someone famous writing their memoirs (and settling scores) and someone writing his in order to be famous. If your claim to fame is what you write -- especially a first-person account of harrowing tales and subsequent recovery -- honesty is your calling card.

I won't go into specifics about Frey's many "inaccuracies" in his book, but when you say you ran over a cop while wasted on a pharmacy list of narcotics, got a plea-bargain for three years in the Big House, and were delivered from incarceration because a mobster friend got things fixed with the D.A. and none of it is true -- not running over the cop, not a three-year sentence, nothing -- you're not simply a teller of tall tales or someone who exaggerates. You're a liar.

What makes it all the worse is that Frey has ridden on his high horse of truth, truth, truth. No more bullshit, he says. This is what really fucking happened. Screw all those Dave Eggers and b.s. artists. Fuck the bullshit, it's time to throw down! (Just like it says on my tattoo.)

Look close, and there's a pattern here. Frey, Khouri, and Pelzer all write first-person tales of woe, their protagonists endure and overcome, and apparently not a single fact-checker vetted their work.

The rise of the confessional memoir is partly to blame for all this gassy bloviation. Not your standard autobiography, the confessional memoir came into vogue during the 1990s as writers mined their own histories for material, often stories of unpleasant childhoods or adult addictions. Some were inspiring, some sordid, some just plain bad. Many were straightforward tales of a blah blah blah-nature, but told with verve. They all supposedly told the truth, and were far more open to confession and contrition than, say, Bill Clinton's memoirs.

The problem is that if you're a nobody peddling a memoir, it better damn well be a page-turner. A good writer can make the dullest of life tales into a worthwhile reading experience, and plenty of memoirs bear this out. But a poor writer usually needs to go over the top to capture readers: drug addition, murder, leaving the toilet seat up.

Most people's lives are, frankly, pretty boring to read about (yours truly included). But as more memoirs hit the streets, the more sensational they've become. You have to capture the public's attention somehow.

Frey fell into that trap. He wanted attention so badly that he took a novel with a plot so preposterous that it wouldn't make it as a soap opera script and called it fact. And if you have to make stuff up in your memoir, either your tale isn't that interesting or you're not that talented. I can't think of anything more damning than that.

Only time will judge the ultimate quality of "A Million Little Pieces," but as a book fraud analyzing a total fraud, I have a feeling that history will serve up a sentence much harsher than Frey's imagined three years in the can.

Excercising the Mind, Wasting Away Talent

"Do the Senses make Sense?" asked John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. in the foreward of Lolita, and Dr. Bookfraud, in his examination of the disturbed patient in question -- who has no attraction to nyphets or likewise, I might add -- must ask, "Does altering song lyrics into disgusting poems that could be interpreted as celebrating copraphagia and the like the sign of creative genius or disturbed mind?"

Don't know what I'm talking about? An example will suffice. Picture a large-screen TV in a corporate break room blasting out CNN as this fair writer held his cup out for A.M. manna. Cut from Anderson Cooper to a commercial for a prescription Medicare drug plan, the new, Bush-installed regime which is harder to figure out than the appeal of Jonathan Safron Foer. But it was not the images on the screen nor its underlying message that suddenly made my blood run cold. It was not the happy seniors cavorting around a pharmacy like they'd won a full set of Matlock DVDs. It was none of these things. It was the song.

The seniors were dancing around the drug store to the sounds of "You're Still the One." Although this tune is not as brain-deadening as another song I loathe, it eats at me, hard. This was the song that has been used in at least 100,000 other commercials, particularly for small-town TV newscast teams.

Such as the one in which Arnold, Paula, Harvey, Nutty Ned the Weatherman are seen walking down a hall together, chatting and laughing, or meeting groups of schoolchildren, or sitting around the news set, having an off-camera conversation sotto voce about the Important News Decisions they'll be making tonight. At least one of them will look straight into the camera and give a hearty "Thumbs Up." The entire time, "You're Still the One" plays in the background, vibrating one's eardrums to the point of mental illness. We're still having fun, and Channel 6 SuperNews Team is Still the One!


You're making me crazy

So instead of planting my fist through the television, some chamber clicks in my brain, and I think of lyrics so grotesque that I will paraphrase them here: "[We're still doing something profoundly disgusting]/And you're still the one."

Then there is the song's evil twin sister. "This Is It." I hearken back to childhood, being forced by the babysitter to watch the 1975 Junior Miss Teen America pageant or some similiarly titled abomonation. As the shiny, happy 16-year-olds twirled around the stage in low-decolletage dresses like jailbait, Kenny "Drop a" Loggins proclaimed "This is it!" in song. The Junior Miss Teen America Pageant 1975! Yeah, this is it! What a thing to behold! The ne plus ultra of all competition! No more waiting -- this is it!

Instead of the lyrics that go with Mr. Loggins' masterpiece, I think of this: "[Something disgusting about] shit/Make no mistake who you are/[Something disgusting about] shit!" etc. as I envision the high-school uber-princesses of my adolescence in a swimsuit competition.

What, if anything, this rant has to do with the creative process is unclear to me. I have often likened the fact that these rotten songs have driven me to extremes, for which I must construct an alternate reality to maintain sanity.

I am curious, however, if such scatological wordplay enhances or dulls the creative process. You see, these are but two of myriad examples -- I have written alternate lyrics for many a pop tune or commercial jingle, which I will not share with my children once we have some. In fact, I have never shared this tendency with Wife, who would certainly see me as the disturbed psychotic, a febrile corvine man with an MFA and the ability to type 80 wpm.

Reconfiguring tunes into my own personal verson of dirty limricks started when I was in high school, when all my sexual energy had to go someplace. I would even do this with songs I truly enjoy. I turned the Zombies' "She's Not There" into "She Eats Hair." "Taxman" into a meditation on shagging. "YMCA" into something so unrecognizable that to understand it requires a strong stomach, a truly warped sensibility, and a thorough knowlege of the Chicago suburbs.

I am truly torn about this -- am I just wasting my creative muscle away on profanity, which usually happens spontaneously, or is this just the sign of a brilliant and disturbed mind?

I await your diagnosis.

The Resident Grinch Ignores Christmas. However, When It Comes to Halloween...

The recently completed X-Mas season got me thinking, which is a dangerous notion in itself, because it often leads me to sit down and compose long, rambling, incoherent, unintelligible, overwrought, overbearing, pompous, and ultimately pointless swill that you, the reader, willfully ingest like a holiday ham, and for this, I extend my belated holiday greetings indeed.

But anyway, since brevity is the soul of wit, let me guide you through barren pastures of my mind. Christmas, of course, is by far the biggest consumer-spending orgy in the land, but what is the second-largest? Thanksgiving? No, even with frozen turkeys and copious amounts of Wild Turkey. Valentine’s Day? Roses, chocolate, and broken hearts, forget it. Fourth of July? Bet your stars and stripes and backyard barbecue, nope.

If you said “Stupid Bookfraud, it’s Halloween, what kind of idiot do you take me for?” you are right. Yes, candy and pumpkins and black cats, that Halloween. Americans spend $7 billion a year on Halloween, including $586 million spent on home decorations. Halloween is also the second-largest day for beer sales, behind St. Patrick’s Day.

Thus, another great juvenile event that adults have ruined.


Count to 3-D

Halloween is a personal cause of this scribbler, because it happens to fall on my birthday (Not the other way around). At one time, the day of ghosts and goblins was the ultimate kiddie fun fest. You dressed, ran wild around the neighborhood, hoarding bags of sugar-infested treats. The adults facilitated Halloween and did not dominate it; they bought the outfits, the candy, and escorted us around the ‘hood. They sponsored cheezy haunted houses and generally got the hell out of the way.

Now, costume parties and booze-besotted 30- and 40-somethings rule the day. Not only do families dress up their children, but their houses and lawns, a la Christmas. There are elaborate Halloween bashes at bars and adults dressing up and going to work as witches, wraiths, ghosts, and assholes (some people just go as themselves).

I don’t have any cultural history to back this up, but if I would blame any single person, it would be Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. The character was the first push in de-infintilizing Halloween. Remember her? She was really, well, I don’t really know what she was, but rarely has such a destructive element plagued our land and corrupted our adults. You know Elvira. The pale, large-bosomed lady outfitted in a spiked black wig and a slinky dress that looked like something Edith Head would have done if she were force fed heroin and commissioned to make outfits for porn flicks.

Elvira was innocent enough -- the Elvis ripoff aside -- making appearances in TV specials and mall openings. Then some Einstein on Madison Ave. decided that Elvira would be a great spokeswoman to sell Coors. For Halloween. Kids of a certain age may want to drink beer, but they can’t buy it, most of the time. It's the old folks who drink and pay for the brewskis, which they willingly did, since Elvira seemed to make one Halloween Coors commercial after another, year after year. Things haven’t been the same since.

Elvira’s roots give a clue to this madness. In the early 1980s, a struggling actress named Cassandra Peterson was hired to host a horror movie show in L.A., and created the Elvira character. Peterson was a former member of The Groundlings, a highly regarded improv group, but saw her future in camp.

For those of us weaned on SCTV, there is clearly precedence here: Count Floyd, the alter ego of SCTV newscaster Floyd Robertson, the alter ego of actor Joe Flaherty. Elvira hosted the real-life, non-SCTV version of Monster Chiller Horror Theater. The parallels are clear. In other words, Halloween was ruined by Count Floyd. Ooooh! Look at that 3-D House of Pancakes! Isn’t that scary, kids!


Cassandra should have warned us

It’s just another symptom of a larger campaign for spoiled, narcissistic Baby Boomers and Gen-X types corrupting childhood by reliving it. Nobody wants to act like an adult anymore. You can see it in the slew of celebrity children’s books. You can see it in the sudden explosion in animation for adults. You can see it in adult obsessions with video games. You can even see it in the $10,000 birthday parties for five-year-olds. They represent the adult self-obsessions of our age, how grownups kidnap adolescent and childhood pleasures and make them their own.

Childhood is no longer the provenance of the very young. Kids have had their toys taken away from them. And they call me a grinch.