The power of redemption

Do you believe in second chances? James Frey probably hopes you do.

Perhaps best known for the controversy surrounding A Million Little Pieces, Freys back with a new novel, Bright Shiny Morning.

Without dredging up the past or my opinions about Frey, I will say I think our society has a dangerous habit of hyping up people and making them into stars and then delights in completely demolishing them. Look at Frey, one minute he’s on Oprah, hundreds are reading his book, flash forward he’s eating crow on Oprah.

That said, I couldn’t bring myself to read my copy of A Million Little Pieces. To me I didn’t see the point of reading something that I knew wasn’t the real thing. And I think the criticism he faced was legitimate.

With his new novel, Frey is now back in the limelight. He recently guest blogged over at Amazon’s Omnivoracious.

Amazon also included some reviews of Frey’s book in their regular feature: Old Media Monday: Reviewing the Reviewers:

(New York Times Janet) Maslin on Bright Shiny Morning by one of our other guests this week, James Frey: "The million little pieces guy was called James Frey. He got a second act. He got another chance. Look what he did with it. He stepped up to the plate and hit one out of the park. No more lying, no more melodrama, still run-on sentences still funny punctuation but so what. He became a furiously good storyteller this time."

(Los Angeles Time’s) David L. Ulin on Frey's Bright Shiny Morning: "'Bright Shiny Morning' is a terrible book. One of the worst I've ever read. But you have to give James Frey credit for one thing: He's got chutzpah.... Whatever else his failings as a writer, Frey was once able to move his readers; how else do we explain the success of 'A Million Little Pieces'? It's just one of the ironies of this new book that his fictionalized memoir is a better novel than 'Bright Shiny Morning' could ever hope to be."

The Boston Globe’s book blog, Off the Shelf also weighs in, “The Power of Redemption.” http://www.boston.com/ae/books/blog/2008/05/the_power_of_re.html

I feel like Off the Shelf makes some good points. While I believe everyone deserves a second chance, there are so many amazing authors and books I want to read, I would say Frey’s pretty low on my list.

Additional Reading:

Reviews mixed on new James Frey fiction, http://uk.reuters.com/article/stageNews/idUKN1343588520080514

James Frey emerges, with a novel about LA, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/05/14/entertainment/e130639D97.DTL

James Frey's 'Bright Shiny Morning': the reaction, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/05/james-freys-bri.html

Disgraced author James Frey rebounds with messy 'Morning', http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2008-05-14-frey-bright-shiny-morning_N.htm

(The above image originally appeared on people.com)

A shaky house of cards

I held off posting about Love and Consequences because I felt like it might not have been timely enough. Sadly enough, another non-fiction work is drawing criticism for possibly blending the line between truth and well, fiction.

Sunday’s Boston Globe leverages some damning charges against Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich, which chronicles a group of MIT students adventures in Vegas. According to sources the Globe interviewed, certain events described in the book never happened, events were exaggerated and characters created.

The author and publisher are defending the book, saying they had a disclaimer that some characters were composites and that the timeline was altered.

From the Globe:

"The idea that the story is true," he (Mezrich) adds, "is more important than being able to prove that it's true."

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Yet "Bringing Down the House" is not a work of "nonfiction" in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead of describing events as they happened, Mezrich appears to have worked more as a collage artist, drawing some facts from interviews, inventing certain others, and then recombining these into novel scenes that didn't happen and characters who never lived. The result is a crowd-pleasing story, eagerly marketed by his publishers as true - but which several of the students who participated say is embellished beyond recognition.

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"When the public learns that a small piece of a supposedly nonfiction story has been fictionalized, they begin to doubt everything in that story, and when they begin to doubt a particular story then the doubts occur in their mind about whether they can trust any work, or any work of nonfiction," says Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute.

Just weeks ago Love & Consequences, which was supposedly written by a former gang member who grew up in South-Central Los Angeles, bouncing between foster homes, selling drugs, was exposed as a fraud. After a glowing profile came out in the New York Times, her sister blew the whistle. Turns out Margaret did not have a hard scrabble childhood, was never in a foster home and went to private school.

I realize some might argue that you really can’t compare Seltzer and Mezrich, but I think both raise troubling issues. For whatever reason, it appears writers think it’s easier to pitch non-fiction than novels. I remember reading James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces was originally pitched as a novel.

These kinds of shenanigans really make my blood boil. Have a compelling story, but don’t have the facts to back it up? Then write a novel.

What these writers are doing hurts readers, publishers and fellow writers.

It’s lying. Let’s not pretend otherwise. You can dress it up any way you like, but it’s a falsehood. Seltzer claimed she was trying to bring other’s plight to light. Then work with inner-city children, help them learn how to express their stories.

When the James Frey debacle started, I sold my copy of A Little Million Pieces to the local bookstore without even reading it. I just bought Bringing Down the House at a library sale and it’s going right on Paperbackswap.com. That may seem a little harsh, a little reactionary. But my interest in reading it has taken a blow.

There are so many wonderful books out there waiting to be discovered that I don’t want to waste a second on something that might be built, pardon the pun, on a shaky house of cards.

What do you think?

House of Cards, http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/04/06/house_of_cards/

Is Bringing Down the House a fraud?

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/is-bringing-down-the-house-a-fraud/

‘Margaret,’ another memoir too good to be true, http://www.newsday.com/features/booksmags/ny-bkcov5627035mar30,0,7904690.story

An antidote to the Margaret Joness, http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/books/la-bkw-hamilton9mar09,1,7387611.story

This Column Is Real, But Not All Authors Stick to the Truth, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120752688255593701.html?mod=googlenews_wsjFooled Fooled Again, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/opinion/16pubed.html?ref=opinion