A Million Little Fabrications?
“Oh no he didn’t!!!”
By now, you’ve no doubt heard the hubbub over James Frey’s book “A Million Little Pieces.”
Long story short, this memoir of addiction, crime and hard living- which Oprah selected for her Book Club- turns out to be more fiction than fact.
I’m not gonna join the pile-on- this guy obviously has big enough problems already.
However I will say this- you don’t fuck with Oprah and get away with it. Oprah made you; Oprah can destroy you.
Umm, Cattlemen’s Association ring a bell? Oprah nearly single handedly destroyed the beef industry.
Or how about Hermes? She had them pissing their couture trousers.
This is gonna get ugly.
Eh, in the grand scheme of things, who cares?
If you read the book (I did not) and it affected you *that much* then what does it matter? It still affected you.
Even if the entire thing was a work of fiction (I suspect it’s just more exaggeration) it’s not like he’s the President of the United States who sent thousands of kids off to die because of a bunch of lies. But I digress…
I agree- this is trivial. Mainly, I just wanted an excuse to link to the Chappelle Theory!
Here’s my beef, true stories are by nature and fact more compelling than fiction. Not anyone can make up a good story, but even fewer can live and document a life worth writing about. A few years back I started a new job and my group made me do the old tell us something about yourself we wouldn’t necessarily believe. So I did…and went on to tell them about my military experience and how I was kicked out just before Desert Storm. Anyway, I didn’t tell them it was just a story, just figured they’d be skeptical. I was wrong. Everyone believed me and respected me for having the balls to join the Army. Well after two days of hero worship I had to tell them it was just one of my fun bar stories. Yikes, they were pissed. I think the point here is that a lie is a lie. Noone likes to feel ripped off and that is what this crackhead did. Anyone can lie and that makes this dude a loser in my book. He had better fear the Oprah. I just read on CNN that the publisher is offering a refund. That is guilty with a capital G.
“it’s not like he’s the President of the United States who sent thousands of kids off to die because of a bunch of lies.”
Dave? – you are preparing to be a lawyer, yes? Are you confident that you could prove your case? Or do you just say that because it is so original?
Ben: I say that to put the Frey thing in perspective. Everyone’s all bent out of shape because a guy (who *did* do drugs and *was* in jail–even if not to the extent in the book) wrote a book that *everyone loved* and now they’re all upset because they got sucked in by an (apparently) really good story.
In comparison to just about anything else of substance going on in the world: BFD. Get over it.
As for my allegations, yeah, I am pretty confident I could prove my case. Shame Bush couldn’t/can’t prove his…
Yeah, I’m not too concerned about the book thing. Actually, I don’t care at all.
As for Bush, I guess that’s for a different post, since I seem to have a habit of getting people off topic. But I would be curious as to how you would prove he lied.