After months of personal musing on the degree of "truth" that goes into nonfiction books, The Smoking Gun has published a very lengthy investigation into the Truth of James Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces. And they determine that it is basically made up of a million little lies -- of both the white variation, as well as the more serious kind. And this fires people up. Does the act of writing one's own memoir, by definition, take the Truth and turn it into a dramatized variation of the truth?
I would argue that it does. It's not the story itself that is so compelling (let's face it; he's a privileged kid who parties too much in college, and his parents pay for rehab), but the way he tells it.
Well, James Frey will be on Larry King tomorrow (Wednesday) night, so I suppose all the speculators, critics and fans will get to hear his side of the story then.
Comments