A Million Little Somethings

I just finished reading James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces. The experience was tainted for me since I live in a world with electricity and heard about how most of the book was fabricated. If you read A Million Little Pieces as the God's honest truth, you view James Frey as a guy who had some really hard times in his life and is trying to make amends. If you read The Smoking Gun's appraisal of James Frey's actual criminal record, you view him as a spoiled little rich boy who flat-out lied about his past to make himself a martyr and sell books and himself as a personality.

You may remember I stuck up for Frey at first. Memoir is a tricky genre, and people who are stone-cold sober have a hard time remembering things that happened ten years ago, nevermind people who were cracked out when the events took place. Hell, even Oprah stood up for him. But when it became clear that Frey grossly exaggerated what happened to him for his own financial gain (and I think there's some emotional gain for him too) she and I both jumped the Goodship Frey.

Of course, now the obligatory spoof book has come out, predictably titled A Million Little Lies. The USA Today reviewer, Donna Freydkin, feels bad for Frey.

Lies is amusing, and it's certainly satisfying at moments to laugh at a writer who lied about his criminal past, turned a common problem into a sordid horror story and then made a mint off his fabrications. But what might have worked as a 1,000-word essay in The Onion is too long-winded.

And there's something mean-spirited about mocking Frey, who made a mistake and paid for it. Frey did so much damage to himself that parodying him seems, well, excessive.

I don't think it's excessive at all. I think Frey deserves being made fun of because he dishes shit out and he can't take it. As Sars points out on her website review of A Million Little Pieces and the ensuing debacle, Frey made himself out to be the savior for people who don't want to do the typical AA, higher-power route to recovery. If he'd written the book, appeared on the show and just talked about the book, I think people would be a lot more forgiving of his lies. But when Oprah sends you to a "Treatment Center" to talk to people who are overcoming addiction and you're acting like Doctor Phil, it makes you seem like you're accepting that role as a godless drug addict's messiah. Having read the book, I believe that Frey has an incredible need to be the center of attention and made to feel like a bad-ass. He's a spoiled white boy who feels his daddy didn't love him enough, and while that is a legitimate problem, that's not the book he wrote. Frey's willing to accept any kind of credit, even when it's not due to him, and people hate that. He did this to himself, and he should deal with the consequences, including predictable spoof books.

A Million Little Pieces is interesting, don't get me wrong. It's a quick read, and it is engaging, even if some parts of it aren't well written. At one point, Frey goes on and on about being fucked up, fucking people up, badass talk, and then drops in "I can solve this feeling with copious amounts of drugs." It takes you right out of the moment and jars you so badly you get reader's whiplash. It's worth a read if only to participate in the pop culture debate about artistic license versus putting a nonfiction book into the realm of fiction, but don't feel bad for Frey. He's got money to keep him happy, even if Oprah took him out of her cell phone.