Surely I've not been the only one following the recent dust-up over the book (promoted by Oprah Winfrey to the top of the bestseller list) which turned out to be a fraud,
A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey. The Smoking Gun did some
investigative work which the publisher apparently (or maybe deliberately) failed to do, and found that the majority of events depicted in the book simply never took place. In fact, large parts of the book may have been crudely plagiarized.
I thought some of you might like a diary which covers a subject not as immediate and pressing as the Alito confirmation, but that does illustrate the general movement in our society that it's not Truth or Lies that matter, only the exposure of such. Nothing wrong with illegal wiretapping, it's the whistleblowers who are to blame for exposing it! This absurd drama surrounding Oprah and James Frey only serves to emphasize the trend.
Much more below...
After noting that Frey was going to be on Larry King on Wednesday night, I turned on the last half of the show, foolishly expecting some admission of guilt in the face of undeniable evidence, but merely seeing endless obfuscations and equivocation from Frey, with his dear mother sitting at his side, aiding and abetting the propagation of his lie. Not an ounce of remorse or even understanding that what he had done was wrong. His attitude and personality were
very familiar to me, and I'm sure would have been to many of you. The story was all too familiar. Middle-aged man emerges from a posh, wealthy upbringing and lifelong alcoholic haze with a messiah complex, determined to erase and lie about his past in order to make vast sums of money. His plan is almost Presidential in its ambition.
And as a last dramatic touch, with a minute to go, Larry announced that he had a "surprise" guest on the line waiting to make a statement - surprise, it's Oprah on the phone! Surprise, riiiight.
Okay, I thought, here's where this asshole gets smacked down. Oprah would denounce Frey for his deception, and revoke his book from the Temple. She would admit that she'd been had, apologize to her readers, and move on.
I guess I'm even more gullible than her legions of adoring fans, becasue she did exactly the opposite.
Oprah stood behind The Liar, 100 percent, only expressing dismay at the "controversy," as though the only problem with this whole episode is that it was uncovered as a fraud! The Lie didn't matter, only that lots of people were "moved." (She failed to mention the other part, "enriched.") These people uncovering the truth are just a bunch of playah haters!!
The nauseating pattern of this drama is all too familiar to me, it's so Rovian in its presentation. One of the most amusing tidbits from The Smoking Gun's expose is the threatening letter from Frey's lawyer stating that TSG had better not make any statements that Frey is a liar, because we've expunged his criminal record and now you can't prove it! Isn't that a little like saying, "you can't prove I'm a killer because I hid the body?"
Oprah was certainly taken in by the story. But one of several people who weren't conned by Frey is John Dolan, a writer for exile.ru, who immediately panned the book as the cliche-laden hackery that it is, and in a later article even showed that the work is outright plagiarism of a far superior book by the late, genuine junkie, Eddie Little - Another Day in Paradise.
Compare outcomes: Little paid for his knowledge of junkie-dom and died a junkie's death; Frey stole Little's scars, tears and knowledge, skipped the weird stuff and sold you a cut-and-paste tale of tears ending with redemption, a hymn with a lot of curse words to cut the treacly taste. That's a classic H-wood trick, you know: when a screenwriter doesn't know the streety world he's trying to write, he just puts in a "fuck" every three words. It's cheap spraypaint local color, and the suckers don't mind as long as they get that fake happy ending, that Kenny Rogers redemption, at the end.
And you, you hundred million suckers, shunned Eddie Little and made James Frey your Oprah pick for Next Jesus, with legions of adoring groupies providing mobile cock-suckery for his self-worship tours.
I used to pity you as victims, but I see from your rage at my review that you have a stake, something to lose, in Frey's scam. It's your only chance to feel those human-type emotions you've left behind in real life. Frey's books are Murine for smalltime Bushies: stolen emotions that somebody else had to pay for. A couple of kleenex and you're back at work, indifferent to the misery which pervades our country now.
Eddie Little wouldn't; no Oprah or legion of cocksucking lady fans for Eddie. No nothing except what his obituary writer (the swine) dared to call "an unheroic death." Meaning, of course: a very heroic death. An honest man's honest death, and thus something to be abhorred by the suckers.
Oh, you tsk-tsk at the real druggies, and Frey's happy to feed you the lie that drugs equals addiction equals death or rehab. Of course you never include your faves: booze, the most dangerous drug of all. Or valium. And of course most suckers don't even realize that all of America's elite, from Winona to the junk-bond billionaires, pops prescription opiates legally every day of their lives.
Here's an excerpt of John Dolan's original review of the book from 2003:
Caps are also used to sanctify some of the therapy-babble Frey learns at the clinic. Jonesing hard, he dreams of mounds of drugs. This, a therapist solemnly informs him, is "...a User Dream," caps and all. Indeed. When you fall asleep hungry, you might have an Eater Dream. If you lust in your sleep, you may experience one of those Fucker Dreams.
These capitals feed nicely into the insanely self-aggrandizing tale. Frey's every whim is capitalized and cherished. When he feels calm, a rehab therapist informs him, "You had what is called a Moment of Clarity."
Walking on a trail outside the clinic, Frey names and capitalizes everything: "Trail," "Tree," "Animals." Then he sees a lower-case "bird." I was offended for our feathered friend. Why don't the birds get their caps like everybody else?
But then Frey is no expert observer, as he proves in one of the funniest scenes from his nature walks, when he meets a "fat otter": "There is an island among the rot, a large, round Pile with monstrous protrusions like the arms of a Witch. There is chatter beneath the pile and a fat brown otter with a flat, armored tail climbs atop and he stares at me."
Now, can anyone tell me what a "fat otter with a flat, armored tail" actually is? That's right: a beaver! Now, can anyone guess what the "large, round Pile with monstrous protrusions like the arms of a Witch" would be? Yes indeed: a beaver dam!
Any kindergartner would know that, and anyone with a flicker of life would be delighted to see a beaver and its home. But for Frey, a very stupid and very vain man, the "fat otter" is nothing but another mirror in which to adore his Terrible Fate. He engages the beaver in the most dismal of adolescent rhetorical interrogations:
"Hey, Fat Otter.
He stares at me.
You want what I got?
He stares at me.
I'll give you everything.
Stares at me...."
And so on, for another half-page. You want to slap the sulking spoiled brat. The Fat Otter should've slapped him with its "flat, armored tail" and then chewed his leg off and used it to fortify its "Pile with monstrous protrusions."
But if you hit Frey, you would be in serious trouble. Not just because Frey's dad is a filthy-rich international corporate lawyer, but because, as he never tires of informing the reader, Mister James Frey is one tough bastard. He gets in real fights, albeit only with moribund addicts twice his age.
The expose by The Smoking Gun is thoroughly embarrasing for Frey, were he a man capable of embarrassment. This excerpt describes what TSG found after questioning the officer involved in an arrest that Frey claimed landed him three months in prison, an arrest Frey claimed was a huge screaming multi-cop melee:
Frey was issued two traffic tickets, one for driving under the influence and another for driving without a license, and a separate misdemeanor criminal summons for having that open container of Pabst. He was directed to appear in Mayor's Court in 10 days. Frey was then released on $733 cash bond, according to the report, which was written at 4 AM on October 25. So, Frey's time in custody did not exceed five hours.
To review:
There was no patrolman struck with a car.
There was no urgent call for backup.
There was no rebuffed request to exit the car.
There was no "You want me out, then get me out."
There was no "fucking Pigs" taunt.
There were no swings at cops.
There was no billy club beatdown.
There was no kicking and screaming.
There was no mayhem.
There was no attempted riot inciting.
There were no 30 witnesses.
There was no .29 blood alcohol test.
There was no crack.
There was no Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Assaulting an Officer of the Law, Felony DUI, Disturbing the Peace, Resisting Arrest, Driving Without Insurance, Attempted Incitement of a Riot, Possession of a Narcotic with Intent to Distribute, or Felony Mayhem.
It is interesting to note that Frey's manuscript for this book was rejected by 17 different publishers when he submitted it as a work of fiction. Oddly, it appeared in its current form only after the publisher suggested it might sell better as a "Memoir."