Excerpts: ‘I regret that phone call…’

More related news.

Here are some exact quotes from his author’s note page in the front of book:
“The Rocket Boys…and their lives and times were real, but…I have used a certain author’s license in telling their story…I have used actual names…, I have used pseudonyms for others and also sometimes combined two or more people into one…for clarification and simplification…also taken certain liberties in the telling of the story….particularly…with precise sequences of events and who may have said what to whom…my intention…to stray from strict nonfiction was always to illuminate more brightly the truth.”

It’s in his book, which is now considered a classis, is required reading by many school and universities throughout the country. So maybe, if a writing teacher is teaching memoir writing based on this, then a little ‘illuminating’ of the truth is okay. His is a bestseller and a film now. If Frey had included this, and maybe he did I haven’t even seen the book, he’d be okay. Or is it fiction then?

Are we now going to cull through all the memoirs and check the facts? No, this was an Oprah selection and for whatever reason, that is why it’s in the media now and the author has been dragged through the mud.

As for my memoir, some if it would be unbelievable, so with all this going on, I’m headed for the fiction route maybe. Then I’ll leave it up to the reader to determine what is real or not.

Take a look at Homer Hickam’s memoir of growing up in a coal mining town in WV, Rocket Boys, turned into the film October Sky. He does acknowledge upfront that he melded some characters together, etc. I have met Mr. Hickam, he’s quite an honest man and captured my homestate and the coal mining industry beautifully.

Perhaps if Frey had acknowledged a little embellishment upfront, then there wouldn’t be such a big fuss. The big fuss was that it was an Oprah selection and some writer/reporter wanted to disparage that. Plenty of memoirs are not ‘full’ truths. I have thought about writing my own memoir about time spent in the army and as an army wife. It wouldn’t be the same experience of writing it as the actual experience I had.

Memoir and reporting, however, are two different things, and I have been a reporter. Still, you never really get it ‘right’ as it played out during the event, even as a reporter, there is a slant of some kind. Though reporters should be held to a higher standard than memoirists and should have their facts checked, such as when they reported the the miners were alive in WV when they weren’t. A quick check by the AP reporter, CNN, FOX or Post reporters with the command center at the mine would have been all that was needed besides going on hearsay (as the corporate mine owners should have corrected it on the spot also). We should be demanding more from the media instead of book authors to get it right, to include the reporting of war in Iraq.

Memoirs are just someone’s recollection. I can write a story about some of my Army days, and I know someone else could dispute my recollections. So why bother now? Wrap it around fiction, I suppose. Then people will think it really did happen. ha.

“Would a publisher buy his book again? You bet,” says Simon & Schuster publisher David Rosenthal. “He is that rarest of commodities: he’s sold books.”
Read more…

The buzz continues.

I am frosted but not jealous. One thing for certain, if I ever get published I will never have to worry about whatever Smoking Gun can unearth. I think everyone was complicit – writer and publisher, motivated by blind greed. We all want notoriety, but not this brand.

It’s all so stupid. Like the teacher who has a relationship with a student and thinks he/she will never get caught. Duh. It’s all so brazen and egomaniacal.

Violetismycolor, overcoming his addiction was a heroic accomplishment in itself, without any added embellishment. Yet I wonder if such a personal triumph alone would be enough for it to be published and succeed this way in our current market. Most memoirs we see are written by people who are already celebrities, who have “star appeal”—whatever that is. A sad comment perhaps on what we as a reading public (or the publishers who attempt to predict our reading interests) consider worthwhile or heroic.

Reenie, you’re right, a lot of personal experience goes into fiction. I’ve taken little incidents in my life and interspersed them in my stories in a variety of ways.

I don’t personally know exactly how much embellishment of the truth went on in Frey’s book. I haven’t read it, and I haven’t read the police reports and other resources The Smoking Gun claims to have found. If there were dicussions of whether to publish it as memoir or fiction beforehand, then I’m suspicious about the motives anyone had for publishing it as nonfiction, epecially considering this observation from Lev Grossman at Time.com:

“By claiming that his story was literally true, Frey endowed it with a heightened immediacy and an emotional force that it lacked as a novel—in effect, he borrowed a little extra emotional oomph from his trusting readers, who treated his narrative as 100% lived experience, real dues paid by a real person.”

(Thanks to Lewis Perdue, who commented at Lee Goldberg’s blog, for the link.)

Did Frey make that claim, or did the publisher?

Most of the outraged opinions I’ve read are by other writers. (Maybe I’m reading the wrong blogs to get a clear picture of the reaction to this.) Is there some jealousy here, of his success? Probably. Envy is natural in a business where two writers can plug away at their work, doing their best to improve, to create original work, to write something artistic rather than crap. One makes it big and another remains unknown. Of course there’s going to be envy. I’m envious.

But I don’t think it’s just that. Perhaps Frey has been made the scapegoat for a host of ills. It’s easier to attack a previously unknown writer than a government leader or a news media conglomerate, if you’re looking for someone to blame for all the lies ever told. When people feel suckered they tend to back away in shame, unwilling to admit they were taken in, while their anger smolders. People have accumulated a lot of anger about lies told by those in positions of trust. James Frey may be just the easy target the public has been waiting for, someone safe to point fingers at.

I sort of doubt Frey is entirely to blame for the ultimate decision to publish this as nonfiction. Yet his signature went on a contract somewhere. When we sign publishing contracts it’s not enough that we’re finally making it as writers and getting paid for what we do. That’s wonderful, but we have to consider we’re the ones people will look to if they ultimately decide they’re not happy with what’s inside the cover. Lies have a way of coming back to bite us. Money isn’t everything. Publication isn’t everything. It just sometimes feels like it is.