(this post by Non-MGK author Dan Solomon)
Hey, you know who’s still a douchebag? That James Frey asshole who wrote A Milion Little Pieces.
I read a Vanity Fair article about the guy a month or two ago and thought, you know, maybe he’s not so bad, he probably deserves a second chance. And then I opened this week’s issue of TimeOut London and saw that there was an interview with him in the books section, read it, and had confirmed for me- yup, still a douchebag. But don’t take my word for it- take it away, Frey-guy:
"no book has ever been investigated or picked apart the way mine has, before or since."
No book? Ever? People investigated your book more than they did The Bell Curve, or The Population Bomb, or Holy Blood, Holy Grail? Or, I dunno, fucking Mein Kampf? I know that his point is that most memoirs don’t get the same sort of scrutiny that his did, but the way he talks about it makes it look like he thinks he’s the most specialist writer in the whole world who just got picked on so unfairly.
"if you look at memoirs in general, any one of them that’s readable is going to have the same issues that mine had."
Well, not exactly. When Frey started publishing, he tried to pick a literary fight with Dave Eggers, so let’s compare A Million Little Pieces and A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. Okay, A-1, Eggers’ book’s central concept, that a twenty-something kid had to suddenly raise his little brother after the deaths of both of his parents, is true. Frey’s book’s concept, that he got so fucked up on drugs that he ended up in jail and then met a bunch of strange characters in rehab, including a girlfriend who killed herself, is untrue. So no, any readable memoir can exist without wholesale fabrication of the events of the author’s life. Furthermore, Eggers (who isn’t the first author to do this) included in the paperback edition of the book a full appendix of errata, explaining where the facts of reality differ from those of the book. Voila, even Frey’s literary nemesis was able to write a memoir without those "issues".
"A Million Little Pieces was written as a novel, and its intentions were all literary, all artistic. It was meant to be an insult to self-help books, and somewhere along the line it became one, and I was really uncomfortable with that. I was like, this is me spitting on self-help books… I got put on this pedestal as a recover and addiction superhero, and that was not at all what I wanted… I don’t want to be a guy on TV talking about addiction. Fuck that."
The incredibly douchey thing about this statement is that it makes it seem like all of that shit was just stuff that happened to him, rather than things he actively sought to do. He didn’t get ambushed by Oprah in the middle of the night and forced to appear on the show to talk about addiction and recovery; he didn’t have to turn his book into a brand for a certain school of self-help; he jumped on that pedestal the second it was offered to him. Which is telling, because addicts who haven’t taken any responsibility for their addiction do the exact same thing. Claiming that all of the things that happened to you just happened, as opposed to being stuff you did, is a telltale sign of an unrecovered addict. Which is pretty funny, considering who it’s coming from.
"most of the writers I love were notorious writers: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Hemingway, Celine, Bret Easton Ellis, Mailer…"
Yeah, but guess what those guys are notorious for? Hint: it’s not lying to Oprah. I get that the guy needs to tell himself that he’s some rebel outlaw, but be real- do you think Celine would have ever taken the Oprah’s Book Club stamp on the cover of Death On The Installment Plan? Mailer wasn’t "notorious" because he fabricated events and got caught- shit, Mailer was steadfast in his dedication to keeping fact and fiction distinct. He didn’t try to pass off The Armies of the Night as straight non-fiction, and he was happy to call The Executioner’s Song and Harlot’s Ghost and Marilyn novels. Trying to pass yourself off as an heir to that when the very thing you’re notorious for flies in the face of what he was all about? Douchey, douchey, douchey.
"one of the joys of this being classified as a novel is that none of it has to be accurate or real, and if people want it to be, they can fuck off… I saw the book being discussed on ‘Newsnight Review’ and one of the guys was like ‘well, this information better be real, I feel like he’s conning us again,’ and I’m like, ‘you fucking dumbass. It’s a fucking novel. None of it has to be real.’ Frankly, he reacted just the way I hoped."
This is in response to a question about his new book being full of facts and history that are totally made-up. And yes, he’s technically correct, a novel does not have to have any true things in it if the author doesn’t want it to. But check it out- if you’re making up the history of Los Angeles and the facts about the city, then you’re not writing about Los Angeles. You’re writing about a made-up place that exists in your imagination. You might as well be writing about Metropolis. If you have to reimagine the place in order for it to fit into your novel, then your novel is not actually about LA.
And the douchiest thing in the interview? It comes as a response to a question about whether he wished he’d been more emphatic about how A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard were meant to be classified.
"there were mistakes made, sure."
For a writer who’s not really known for using the passive voice, this is a pretty unique statement. Mistakes were made? Who made them, James? You know, what’s funny about this is the whole construction of the sentence is pretty familiar. Pretty much any time someone fucks up and doesn’t want to admit that it was their fuck-up, they’ll dip into the passive voice for a response like that. Check out the number of Bush administration dickheads who used it to explain the Iraq War, the attorney firing scandal, civilian bombings in Afghanistan, etc- General Richards, Richard Perle, Alberto Gonzales, George W Bush himself, and even John McCain– and you’ll see how powerful a linguistic device it is for people who want to avoid admitting that they fucked up.
So in a single-page interview, Frey manages to avoid admitting responsibility for the lies in his books, treat himself as a victim for having appeared on Oprah, complain about all the unfair scrutiny his made-up memoir received, argue that everybody else does it, so who cares, equate himself with Norman Mailer because he got famous for something that violated one of the main principles of Mailer’s writing, and giggle about the dumbasses who expect that a novel that’s set in Los Angeles be about the real LA and not the Narnia-LA that the author needed to create for the narrative to work. So, yeah- in case you were wondering, James Frey is still a douchebag.
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13 users responded in this post
Yep, definitely a douchebag.
Talking of writers with a tenuous grip on reality: Scott Kurtz doesn’t need to listen to you whiny critics, because he’s better than you, so there: http://www.4thletter.net/2008/08/on-criticism-and-art/
God I hate Frey. Regardless of its level of factual accuracy (or utter lack thereof), A Million Little Pieces was just an awful, awful novel. Horribly written. His ‘style,’ for lack of a better word, is so utterly pretentious and arch it makes my eyes twitch.
It’s kinda like The Da Vinci Code in that both were held up mainly as books for people who don’t usually read.
Douche to the nth power.
I just read some of the forward to the new paperback edition in Borders the other day. I felt so ill I had to go and buy “Mouse Guard” to recuperate. So really it worked out all right.
What the fuck is he doing mentioning good and great writers in an interview about himself? THIS is what’s wrong with the 1st Amendment down here.
But wait! This was in TimeOut London. The UK has some pretty strong libel laws. I’m sure Ellis and the estates of the others could all sue for libel for being compared to so untalented a hack.
Was this the dude who pretended to be in the Rangers and was writing Stormwatch: Team Achilles?
BTN: The point Scott Kurtz tries to make is that, especially in comics, since its an artform that comes out piece by piece over a long period of time, editors and artists tend to listen too much to whiny critics and wind up second guessing their own aesthetic and risk losing what out of fear of losing their fanbase.
Mainly because the whiny critics are the only ones who talk so much.
This is what’s making me lose my productivity big time at my job right now. Where I work, production artists are graded on the amount of work they do versus the “errors” they make and the critics who make the call on what an error is are too fucking well known for making wholly subjective calls based on their own aesthetics even when the instructions clearly state “artist’s judgment”, not “critic’s judgment”. Our clients however, rant consistently to our managers about how we don’t try to make every single ad a show stopper, but in reality, its simply not worth the risk to our production values to make something beyond average when there’s the chance of it being rejected over some critic’s personal aesthetic.
Out of economic survival, we have to pass along crap that we fully acknowledge is only average to avoid risking potential production value problems. The other downside is that since we acknowledge that the critics are truly fucked up and no one in the management seems willing to acknowledge this problem, our production goes down because we are second guessing our own aesthetic.
No one is paying Scott Kurtz to view his webcomic, just as no one is paying to see many webcomics online. This allows the artist/editor considerable freedoms in regards to whether or not to listen to his critics and to pursue greater ideas and greater aesthetic risks. I applaud his efforts to spread this acknowledgment to other artists – that while they are able to view it or not view it at their leisure, the audience simply does not have any claim to the ownership the art and where it progresses, and neither do the critics.
Another example, I am starting my own webcomic and I’ve sent my first chapter to several friends and family and a majority have given me one similar response – that I should try to expand upon the first chapter’s main character (even though she dies at the end of the chapter and I wouldn’t count her as even a minor character after the main storyline picks up in chapter 4 – I’ve mentioned her once in 15 chapters and I don’t expect to do so again for at least another 50-100). I can say that while I may expand on a couple points before I start posting this, I will not be going much beyond who I’ve identified her to be – unless I want to go back someday and explore the events her death catalyzes in greater detail.
Personally, I’d rather drive a fanbase right into the ground than let any part of the audience dictate how my story or my aesthetic should progress. It may not be economically sound, but some artists actually place the value of their own work above how well it is received. I am proud to say that I do exactly that.
Will- It really is terrible writing, yeah. I can definitely see why that contrived tough-guy prose utterly failed to sell as a novel. It’s funny- I think there was just a gap that moment for a character with Frey’s persona in the American consciousness which sold it as a memoir.
Andrew- That was Micah Ian Wright, whose story is equally weird and bizarre. He also published a book of “remixed” propaganda posters for the Iraq war after ripping off the concept from a thread on the old WEF. I actually liked some of his writing, but the guy always left a bad taste in my mouth.
–d
Zenrage: It’s that sense of gross entitlement that leads to Piss Christ getting thousands of taxpayer dollars, and all of the kiddies on deviantart who just put some photoshop filter on something else thinking they’re artists.
There’s nothing gross about the entitlement. Unless you are directly helping with its creation, you don’t own it, you don’t have a say in its editorial process, you don’t have a say in the artist’s progression beyond that. Period.
People who toss on a filter on previous works aren’t artists. They’re violating copyright. The only problem is copyright and trademark laws can only be enforced by the individual artists themselves and artists simply can’t afford to go after every single violation. Even if they could, I don’t see how you could translate that into any claim on the original artist’s work.
As for Piss Christ, its not the first time a large endowment has gone out in return for a product that could have been done for much less by someone else. The problem with this argument is that, when it comes to art, it can only be done in hindsight as its impossible to come up with a timeless masterpiece through a committee – One artist has to be in charge of the final product. Even if “great art by committee” could happen, what the hell makes you think you’re entitled to be on that committee? Paying taxes doesn’t make you qualified to lead armies, channel funding, choose road crews for highway construction – and it sure as fuck doesn’t make you qualified enough to be an art critic. Piss Christ happens from time to time. If you don’t like the final product. That’s your choice. But neither your aesthetic nor your economic outrage make you qualified to make better decisions that those who approved or worked on projects like this.
But Piss Christ isn’t any good.
The thought isn’t “it could be cheaper” but “geeze, this sucks.”
“Piss Christ” moved people on a visceral level and challenged the very definition of art. It lives on to this day in conversations like this one. How much more successful can a piece of contemporary art be? The ongoing dialogue about what art is that “Piss Christ” started, because of the profound reactions people had to the piece, is well worth the taxpayer dollars spent on it. The odds are very good that, when the great history of late 20th Century art is written, many of the artists whose work you do like will be footnotes, while that one will be a chapter with color plates. It was an incredibly successful product of its time.
–d
I never actually read his stuff, but I derived a bit of mean-spirited enjoyment out of the fact that people who are big “oh, I only read non-fiction” types were tricked into reading something “made up.” If you click on my name, my not-updated-for-far-too-long blog still has my post about this at the top of the page.
Actually using a real place and using it to incorporate your fiction is a commmon method for writing fiction. You are evoking the understood reality of the setting, Los Angels and then using it to elaborate your fiction. Capturing and building on myth. I’ve read a number of settings that does this, Sanfransisco, New York and on the top of my head, New Orleans with Ann Rice…