James Frey fabricated major parts of his bestselling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, according to an expose by The Smoking Gun. His book, which is about his drug addictions and run-ins with the law, was a featured selection of the Oprah Book Club that everybody seems to be reading.
From The Smoking Gun:
Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey’s book. The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw “wanted in three states.”
In additon to these rap sheet creations, Frey also invented a role for himself in a deadly train accident that cost the lives of two female high school students.
Read the whole thing here.
Apparently, Frey has said that he and his publisher went out of their way to make sure that all of the facts are accurate. I haven’t read the book myself, but somehow it doesn’t surprise me that a guy who is on drugs for much of the action of the book would be foggy on some stuff. It seems to me that Frey could have absolved himself from criticism by including the following disclaimer in the book:
This book is based on true events, but keep in mind that I was drunk off my gourd and smoking a lot of crack back then.
Of course, he probably wouldn’t have become a best-selling memoirist if he did so.
“Foggy” would be one thing, but if you read the book, it seems like his motivation is just to sound tough and cool and what-not. Like I told Phil, I wrote a book based on true life and embellished a lot of stuff for various reasons, good and bad. But I’m also selling my book as a novel, not as a memoir. (Granted, nobody’s driven a dump truck full of money up to my door and said, “You know, we’d really think this would sell if you marketed it as a memoir,” but I’d like to think I’d still not sell out in a situation like that.) Anyway, given the author’s general attitude and overall cockiness in the published interviews I’ve read, I couldn’t help but feel an unhealthy amout of (somewhat hypocritical) schadenfreude.