Tuesday, January 10, 2006

my spidey sense was tingling. Here at Blogcabin, we don't often wade into the waters of controversy and righteous anger. Sometimes, we dip our toe in -- but then, of course, we get said toe the hell out of the water before our pedicure gets smudged. From the very beginning, I said this would not be a political blog or a news blog or a public issue blog, primarily because there are 14 gazillion other blogs doing that job better than I ever possibly could. I'm quite convinced that the only blog I could write with any modicum of skill would be a blog about me. I know me. I know my life. I know what I've done and where I'm headed. Apparently, however, the notion of writing about self is something that other people are struggling with as of late. Not because they don't have anything to say and certainly not because they don't know what they've gone through. No -- they know. They just choose to tell another story and claim it as truth. But before I release my building head of steam here, let me say this: I am not an Oprah Winfrey fan. This shocks many people I know and love. They see Oprah as a paragon of feminine strength, a torchbearer for the charitably-minded, and an entertainment-industry powerhouse. They watch her show. They read her magazine. They read the tomes she selects for her book club. They oooh and aaaah at her Angel Network gestures and shed tears of indignation along with her when she goes on location to "comfort the people and expose the truth" in Africa or Louisiana or Mississippi or the Hermes boutique in Paris. I see her as one of the most self-aggrandizing, ideologically-shiftless, finger-pointing, fame-obsessed celebrities in the world. I think she appropriates the skills of others, stamps a giant "O" on them, and markets them to millions and millions of women looking for a hero. Does she know how to shill her image? Yes. Does she know how to run a business? Yes. Has she made a hell of a lot of money and fame in the process of doing her thing? Yes. Is this enough to make me want to emulate her? No way. I could lend her some admiration if she would cop to being a savvy business woman with a interest in philanthropy -- nothing more, nothing less -- instead of some weird combination of Ghandi and Diana Ross. But her business is sequined sainthood, and I cringe every time I see her glom onto a cause or throw new car keys in the direction of tragedy. There is no central value, no personal compass, no overarching distinctive, no effort towards establishing clear priorities. She will let Tom Cruise jump on her couch. She will sell Dr. Phil as a relationship guru nonpareil. She will give as much attention to high thread-count sheets as to a starving child... depending on the focus of Today's Show, of course. What startles me most is how she pleads for your money while diamonds the size of acorns flash in her earlobes. Oprah, honey, I got some bills to pay and I already gave everything I could. Why don't you go hock a pair of shoes and buy someone a house? When all is said and done, I cannot watch that show without wanting to crawl out of my skin. But I did... I did. One day. And it was the day James Frey was on, last week. Frey's bestselling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, has been chosen as her latest Oprah's Book Club selection. This is actually a departure for the "club"; until now, all the titles chosen have been fictional works (including -- much to my chagrin -- works by one of my favourite authors, William Faulkner.) This was Oprah's big point when she announced her choice: she claimed that she had to choose Frey's book because it kept her up at night. She simply could not bring herself to put it down. She stated unequivocally that it was one of the most brilliantly raw and engaging stories she'd come across in recent years, and thus a shoo-in selection for the club, despite the fact that it was an autobiography and not straight-up literature. After all, it reads like a novel! And that's mostly because -- and the truth is emerging at breakneck speed -- that's pretty much all A Million Little Pieces was. James Frey is a former substance abuser with a criminal record and a penchant for blunt force trauma-style prose. His tale begins with suburban disenfranchisement, moves on through bodily fluids and death scenes, and ends with liberation from addiction (not to mention a cute wife, a baby, and a Powerbook). After years and years and pages and pages of degradation, suffering, violence, and illness, he enters rehab and magically remains relapse-free. Voila! Reading the book is an experience somewhat akin to dragging your face across sandpaper: it's rough, unending, abrasive, and merciless. The level of descriptive detail is near-scatological. People claim to be unable to put it down, but my guess is that engages some of them in much the same way watching a train wreck might: with this much horror and destruction, can you really look away? But I contend that the reason that it has found such favour with Oprah's audience has nothing to do with the torrid homage to Thompson and Kerouac and Miller that Frey tries for in the book. It has to do with the feel-good ending that finishes the book off like a dollop of whipped cream on a wound. Today, Frey spends his days travelling on book tours, writing screenplays, counseling other former (and present) addicts, and existing in glossy freedom from his old life. Drugs? No way! Violence? Uh uh! Anger? And have you seen the cute baby? That's just so... inspiring. He's okay! Can you believe it? And he's on Oprah! I'm pretty sure that Frey thought he'd struck the jackpot when he got the call from the Harpo staff. It's well known in the publishing world that a nod from Oprah means a tenfold increase in sales -- and that's being conservative. When he came on the show he answered tearful questions from the audience, met people who'd been inspired by his story in bookstores, and listened to testimonial after testimonial about the power of his words in other folks' lives. And through it all, I could not shake one, crystal-clear thought: He's a fraud. I felt terrible for thinking that, but there you have it. Partly, I think it was because I couldn't wrap my mind around what exactly caused him to feel victimized; he had a family that loved him and had done whatever they could to make him happy (his mom was even there, tearfully grinning in the audience, owning up to paying the rehab bills), and he'd grown up in a safe, abuse-free environment. But that alone wouldn't be enough to turn me into a skeptic. I know plenty of people from amazing families who have ended up on the streets because that's just how they coped with events in their lives, through some mysterious and toxic combination of biological, psychological, and social factors. Addiction is born of choices and circumstances and tendencies and intangible needs, not a linear line of cause and effect. I get that. Maybe it was because I look at Oprah's Book Club as less a tool of mass literacy than a blight on the creative world. But I knew that wasn't it, either. Mostly, I looked at James Frey and thought he was flat-out, bad-poker-tell, shifty-eyed, fidgety-sitting, obvious-to-anyone-who-has-dealt-with-teenagers lying. I mean, I wanted to get behind his triumph, his candor, his strength. I love stories of personal victory. But this just seemed like wannabe, self-indulgent, derivative crap being trotted out by a poseur to the nth degree. Try as I might, I could not shake my scowl. Which I hate. And now, only days after I watched the episode, The Smoking Gun has released a searing expose that validates every tingle of disbelief that travelled up my spine that day: A Million Little Lies. An expose that has been picked up by every major name in glitterati media circles from the the New York Times to Salon.com (who, to their credit, thought the whole thing was just as self-indulgently, stridently crappy as I did before this whole scandal came to light). The story had even hit (by then) more independent media sources like Defamer.com. It turns out that Mr. Frey had fabricated a good portion of his "memoir" -- with everything from false jailings to fake assaults to fake addictions to fake girlfriends -- to build what was initially being marketed as a novel into a tell-all extraordinaire. Apparently, the Nan A. Talese publishing imprint that brought the book to press insisted that it be distributed as a non-fiction offering, and Frey didn't even blink. He just went along for the ride. Did you get that? It was a novel, based on his life. Kind of. Which would have been fine. And then it was published as a true story. With his consent and blessing. Not to mention searing, arrogant, gut-wrenching self-promotion. Frey claimed up and down and sideways when it was released that it was true, all true. He embraced every gritty detail as his experience and used it to reach out to thousands of people struggling with their own addictions or addiction-related mayhem in the lives of their loved ones. I suppose you could say the end justified the means. Everyone is saying the end justified the means. But I'm not going to say that. I'm calling bullshit. I have rarely found myself incensed as deeply by a pop culture fiasco as I have been by James Frey's deceit. What is most repellent to me is that he co-opted the stories of other people -- other victims, other families, other survivors -- and used them to grab at his own piece of the fame pie. And he wanted to be famous, make no mistake. In a 2003 article in Salon (published on my birthday, no less) he spoke about how he related to the literary establishment around him: " I don't give a f*** what they think about me. I'm going to try to write the best book of my generation and I'm going to try to be the best writer." Admirable? Absolutely. It's good to aim high. Hell, I do. But to promote a giant fraud (with nearly pathological fervor) to carve out your niche? That seems like a bad start, Jimmy. It's almost too early to tell how this is all going to play out, but when I saw the news on Salon.com today, I was appalled... but not completely surprised. After seeing the Oprah episode, I told any number of people that I thought he was a personality-challenged scammer. I don't know why I knew. I just did. But to be that right, that quickly? Yikes. I would give him kudos galore for kicking his drug habit and telling his story openly, if only his actions had been that simple. I'm not a fan of the classic, vomit-soaked, tear-stained drug memoir, but I can get behind honesty in a big way, especially if it helps someone come to terms with their issues and allows them to reach out to people who need support and hope. I would even put forward the notion that "truth" is something we relate through a filter of our own understanding; you can only write from your perspective, especially within the structure of a memoir. All of us have discrepancies in how we recall our experiences. Especially if, say, we were addled on coke a good portion of the time. I can deal with a little invention. But to invent whole experiences? To invent people? James Frey has done nothing but a disservice to his fellow addicts by mocking the honesty they are trying to build into their lives on a daily basis. He has done a disservice to the families of the people he lied about by misappropriating their pain as his own. He has done a disservice to his family by capitalizing on the hell he put them through during his suburban-kid downfall. Not to mention making a mockery of their devotion with a supernova lie. I'm trying not to gloat that Oprah is in the middle of the storm; I have seen her use the suffering of others for grand self-promotion in the past, but it's hard to say if she had a clue about what she was getting into with Frey. I don't know how she'll respond to the allegations, especially if they permanently taint his career. Will millions and millions of viewers have to dry their tears and take A Million Little Pieces out of their bathroom reading baskets? Our society's insatiable appetite for tragedy and lurid detail is something she's succesfully banked on in the past, but will her credibility finally suffer here? There's little chance of that, I suppose. So many people want to believe his fictions are acceptable as long as someone... anyone... connects with them and gets help. As long as people are made to feel good, it's fine. Right? But wait a second... isn't that the primary argument for taking drugs in the first place? Feeling good at whatever cost? Oprah will probably just pull the noble victim card, pluck a new bestseller from the ether, and continue trafficking false emotion in a fashion not unlike that of our troubled hero. Because that's what sells. All I know is that the words of Mark Twain have never seemed more apt: Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said. 1:05:27 AM    well, yes, but...  []

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