WARNING: Spoiler’s regarding James Frey’s books contained below!
Not to pat myself on the back too much, but…oh, what the hell: I totally called it on James Frey’s books. Sometime around Fall of last year, I sent out a request to certain of my friends for book recommendations. Ryan Goepel, Canuck extraordinaire, kindly obliged. I enjoyed all of his recommendations. However, "A Million Little Pieces" and "My Friend Leonard," both by James Frey, struck me as somewhat…contrived. After reading the books, I put out a quick BS bulletin in my tiny book review section to the left side of this blog. It’s still there as a monument to my awesomeness.
I told more than a few friends that the book was BS, but none of them agreed with me. So how did I know? Because, as a lawyer (and therefore a connoisseur of BS), I am the proud owner of a finely tuned BS detector, which went off from the very first page of this book. It wasn’t so much that Mr. Frey survived the drug and alcohol abuse – after all, Mick Jagger is still around, and even acquired enough sense to rid himself of Bianca – but the hackneyed, self-glorifying plot and the oh-so-convenient storyline were just too much to swallow. I have chronicled a few of the major tip-offs at the end of this entry, below, to give you a chance to avoid the spoilers.
My focus here is on Frey’s defenders, among them the Goepes, who sent me the following comment:
"The only thing I would say is that I read the first book not thinking it was a memoir, but a novel. Still enjoyed it. Regardless of whether its true or not, the books made me think and entertained me. Its too bad people are getting caught up in the facts… why should that start now? This is a very tongue in cheek comment about western society (and probably others) in how we tend to have an answer and then seek the "facts" to justify our opinions."
To explain my position, which is the polar opposite of Ryan’s, I would like to invoke an old Texas expression: "Don’t piss on my boots and tell me it’s raining." In other words, it is offensive for Mr. Frey to tell an outrageous story packaged as "truth,” then damn as a blasphemer those who express doubt regarding the power of positive thinking as an avenue to freedom from addiction." After The Smoking Gun nailed Mr. Frey to the wall with real facts, his response was "I never said it was true….it was a memoir." Ah.
The story also appeared designed for Mr. Frey to sound off on a number of his pet peeves. He is quite hostile to religion. One of his favourite sentences in the book is "F*ck God," or some variant thereof. It is meant to show that he is not one of the weaklings that must bow to the false concept of a god in order to feel better about his own shortcomings and the unfairness of life. He apparently feels that if he screams "I can do it all by myself!" enough, the world will believe his lie that he is strong enough to make it on his own through problems that almost nobody else can. It comes off, however, like a child angrily refusing his parents help in drinking a glass of water. He is clearly mad at God for his own problems, so mad that he has decided not to believe in Him but can’t quite convince the reader of that.
My own suspicion is that he was furious at having to ask for and accept help in rehab to overcome his drug and alcohol addiction, and that writing the books served as a sort of psychological catharsis in overcoming the lingering feelings of weakness and inadequacy from having done so. Ahh, the male ego… how noble in reason ….No, Mr. Frey delights not me….
Ok, on to the tell-tale signs of BS in Frey’s books. I am too lazy to grab the books and fully categorize the BS moments, but off the top of my head, here are a few:
A Million Little Pieces
1) He claims that his friends put him on a plane while he was unconscious, totally drugged out, and bleeding from open wounds. Call me a doubting Thomas, but I think that even way back in the dark days of the mid 90’s they knew about blood-borne pathogens and other nastiness that could result from exposure of this type. What are the odds of an airline accepting liability for transporting a passenger in this condition? I wonder how it played out? Let’s see…His two friends show up: "Excuse me, stewardess? What should we do with our wounded, drugged out friend, who may or may not be dying?"
Stewardess: "Seat 23-b."
2) Having his wisdom teeth removed without anaesthesia because, as a recovering addict, he couldn’t have drugs. Ummm…no. There are plenty of anaesthesias available for addicts.
3) It is pretty much unheard of to successfully quit hard-core drugs cold turkey, ever, but especially the first time you try.
4) The classic beautiful crack-whore character with a heart of gold who finds self-worth – but ultimately falls short of redemption – through her flawed hero, our Lothario, Mr. Frey.
5) The way he wallowed in his self-proclaimed toughness, a la “I’ll give him a dose of whatever he brings….”
6) He claimed to know a federal judge/magistrate named Miles Davis from Louisiana who had sent an inmate to federal death row. I was unable to verify any of these facts, which should have been easily verifiable if true.
7) I was unable to verify the death of a boxer of any calibre, let alone a world champion, outside of a crack house. Again, this should be easily verifiable if true.
My Friend Leonard
1) The crack-whore with the heart of gold…bah. See #4, above.
2) The tough-as-nails mobster who in a deathbed revelation reveals his hidden homosexuality before succumbing to the ravages of AIDS. Frankly, I was surprised Mr. Frey didn’t knit him a square on the quilt at the end.
3) The rich and beautiful women that flock to him because he’s so rocking and hard-core. It’s a ghetto version of every man’s James Bond dream.
A final comment on his book – it sucks as fiction. It is written so badly that your average high school freshman could have done a better job. Here, I’ll give it a try:
A Million Little Fantasies
A true story, cross-my-heart-hope-to-die, by Frames Jey
"I wake up at the bottom of a sewage dumpster with three bullet holes in my skull and i bite a twig to dull the pain and think the wounds closed as I crawl out, sniffing dumpster fumes to get high all the way. I wander aimlessly towards a green light but it turns red right as i near the street and i feel the fury it eats at me eats at me eats at me i want to kill i want to destroy i want drugs mounds of drugs piles of drugs every kind of drugs. I go outside where a gay junkie fondles me and i kill him with a mean look because i am a criminal i am an addict and i am a whiner but I sure as hell won’t let no one touch my wiener even though all my best friends are gay. I cut open his stomach and remove the kilo of columbian blue he was hiding and i eat the entire thing cellophane and all but its just an appetizer for a badass like me. I see a winsome crack whore in the second story of an abandoned house and i can tell that she is a good person just waiting to be saved by a hidden gem like me because only she can see my inner goodness. She lets down her hair and i use it to climb through her window where i find that the glass crack pipe dropped by a princess of a past lifetime fits her lips perfectly and i know she is the one for me. I see her pimp staring at me hard and and he goes for his glock but when i say f**k the bullshit its time to throw down he turns and runs because he knows that me and la cosa nostra are tight so i cut off his head with a used bottlecap cause’ that’s how we roll in the ‘hab. i turn back to my crackwhore but she was so depressed that i broke eye contact with her that she willed herself to die and i cry because i am a criminal and i am an addict and i feel the fury and it wants me to drink a warehouse of forties and smoke jungles full of weed and eat the entire buffet at cici’s."
Ok, that took 75 seconds to complete, 15 of which were dedicated to deleting commas and stray capital letters that escaped the initial draft. I submit that my version isn’t much worse – or any falser – than Frey’s.
Yeah, the truth and facts matter, Ryan. They matter because facts define, or at least outline, Truth, and without the Truth, you have nothing. It matters because the book only works if it is true. To let this book pass without protest is to have pleasant discussions about the weather while Mr. Frey relieves himself on your footwear.
The Truffle Shuffle Weakly 