oprah did it... now i am too...
on january 11th i wrote a post about a million little pieces by james frey... the just of it: memoir, smoking gun exposes it as fiction, frey claims it's all good, blah blah blah... but today i watched frey drown in his own sorrow and embarassment live on oprah...
when shit hit the fan a few weeks ago, oprah stated that it didn't matter if it were truth (as i did, even though i admit i have not read it)... but upon further self-examination, oprah felt that readers do deserve the truth... when something is tagged as a memoir than we respect it as truth... frey denounced that... he undermined a memoir author's promise of authenticity, and for that, he should be ashamed... touche oprah, touche...
frey looked like he was about to piss himself under oprah's slightly angry questioning and rightfully so... it wasn't all true -- or at least he says he wrote most of it "the way i remembered it"...
now i can't believe that i -- as a studying journalist -- posted that rant on january 11th... of course the truth matters -- good read or not... unfortunately frey seemed to get just as addicted to fame as he once supposedly was to alcohol and drugs... all he needed to do was print five little words on the cover: based on a true story... i think the worst part about it is that people believed in this book, to the point where they proclaimed it changed their lives... it made addiction a tangible story of human emotion and recovery...
frey, it's to those people who you owe the most sincerest apology...
nonetheless, i don't think it means people should burn their copies or seek a refund, rather i think that this has created a huge discourse concerning what true memoirs are truly made of... and fact or fiction, we need to ensure the audience is informed...
