Wednesday, January 11, 2006

twenty-five things i just don't understand. Calculus. The View. Thomas Kinkade. How to fly fish. The East Coast Rap Wars Perl or C++ or anything that sounds vaguely cute but is actually used for programming. Why anyone would pay to go to see Wolf Creek or Hostel. Or Cheaper By The Dozen 2. Vegemite. Or Marmite, for that matter. How to make sourdough starter -- or what exactly it is that you're "starting". Why anyone still cares about Survivor. How cottage cheese came to be revered. Maxim magazine, or as I like to call it, Boysmopolitan. How it can rain and rain and rain and rain and never stop. Ever. Even for a little while. Velour underwear. Why people put icky icing on perfectly good brownies. How anyone can afford to buy shoes. Why James Frey is so deeply, unpleasantly under my skin as to appear tick-like. But more hairy. Why cat treats smell so terrible. Why anyone listens to Tom Cruise's views on anything. The plot of the film, "Mulholland Drive." The universal appeal of Madonna. Why the lino on my bathroom floor is slowly, surely sinking into the earth below. How to correctly consume escargots. Neurochemical research. Why it feels good to eat peaches in a messy way. I mean, can someone explain? 11:38:39 PM    well, yes, but...  [] watching cnn. Larry King = Scary. James Frey = Scarier. Meg = Incredulous. Dude needs to learn to pronounce the word "memoir" without sounding like he's rolling a goldfish around in his mouth. It would appear that James Frey doesn't deny the fabrications in his book A Million Little Pieces. I wasn't sure how he would handle the firestorm around the allegations. He didn't really handle them at all, though. The interview was one long shrug. I could perhaps give him some sort of credit for facing the proverbial music -- were he not simply claiming any lies and omissions to be fair game in the process of crafting his "memoir". Let me be clear on this: I believe that we remember things through the filter of our own consciousness. I acknowledge that any memoir is based on perception to a significant degree. Still, credible memoir (which is not an oxymoron) shouldn't be based on invention to any profound and problematic degree. You can say you wore a blue shirt when you really wore red. You can change names. You can forget nights of your life lost to a drug-induced haze. You can, well... forget. But Frey's narrative liberties were not the result of a faulty or shaky memory. This was an effort of pure creative writing. He added and appropriated events that were patently, inescapably false in relation to his story. Apparently, James Frey has no problem with lying to his fellow addicts. Apparently, Oprah -- a billionaire businesswoman with incredible influence on the populace -- has no problem with James Frey lying to his fellow addicts, either. She even called into Larry King to say so. Everyone defending Frey claims that everything is fine as long as people were helped by the book. I cannot stand behind the notion that truth is not important as long as people are 'served' by the deception. The very nature of the recovery process is intimately concerned with the pursuit of truth, according to my understanding. No one is denying he was an addict. No one is denying he went through a difficult process. But why did he need to invent a backstory when that victory would be story enough for anyone? Two words: book sales. He lied. He did not practice revisionism. He misled people that he claims to want to help. And along with the millions of people "helped" came millions of dollars in sales. I have a feeling that's what really matters to Frey. I pray tonight that everyone depending on his shaky words finds truth of their own to buoy up their recovery. Truth beyond the words of a self-aggrandizing Bukowski wannabe. They deserve better. Evidently James Frey disagrees. 7:24:49 PM    well, yes, but...  [] this is just a note to say... Please, Internet, take heed of the following: For the third night in a row, I have had a dream that I am an inanimate object. First, I was a large mug. I just sat on a shelf, mugging. Then I was a lawn sprinkler. I sprinkled. And last night? A picture frame. I framed. What in the blazes has happened to my normally stimulating dream life? Is my mind seeking refuge from busyness by making me motionless in my resting hours? Or am I just being objectified? Also, for the third day in a row, someone from my "past" (that sounds so deliciously mysterious, but I just mean high school and university) has found me via this blog. Which is funny, since I didn't go by Meg in high school. I went by Meaghan, which is my given name (and Welsh to boot!) I'm comprehensively Google-able! Who knew you were bringing people together like Coca Cola ads, Internet? For the -- you guessed it -- third day in a row I have managed to coordinate myself in the wee small hours of the morning to make myself a cup of java to haul in a travel mug all the way to work. Economy? Yes, but more so than that, PRECIOUS CAFFEINE EVEN EARLIER. May God bless Catherine and her sweet, sweet coffee maker. What joy they have brought to my world! The people where I work are obsessed with my feet. And you're reading this, I know, you crazy people. Everyone has feet! Why are you looking at mine? I can't be the only person in the world who wears Havaianas in winter! But I'm telling you, Internet, if a day went by without someone mentioning my feet, I might think I'd left them somewhere. Like at home. With my shoes. There's something about listening to Kanye West on the iPod while grocery shopping that just makes the experience seem a little more cool. Even if I am buying chick peas on sale, I can still pretend I'm a gold digger. Or something. It turns out that I really, really like ranting on the Internet. At you, the Internet. Ahhh. And it also turns out that me, my coffee, my feet, and Kanye need to get to work. Big freakin' grins out to every last one of you today. 7:04:22 AM    well, yes, but...  [] oy vey! It would seem that my rantalicious postings of late have brought a few bewildered travellers to my door here at the old BlogCabin. And who am I ranting about? James. James Frey. Of course. As though anyone had any doubt. I read back to what I wrote yesterday and I felt guilty for a split second. Was I running around with a bee in my bonnet? A bee up my shorts? A bee in my blog? Nah. I still have absolutely no patience or admiration for faux confessionalism. There is nothing edgy or writerly or real about letting a publishing company dictate the essential manner in you present your work -- especially to the point where you cannot legitimately and sincerely stand behind the veracity of the words you write. There is nothing of integrity in stretching the truth to the point of shapeless, hopeless, and ineffectual prose. The structure of a memoir is not carte blanche to craft your story as you choose, no matter what apologists might say. There are facts you can't ignore. You can want to be the best writer of your generation. You can want to write the most profound tome of your generation. But if you seek to pull a fast one on your generation before you establish your voice, you will lose your credibility in a heartbeat. I don't like that Frey seeks to offer truth and counsel to addicts without much in the way of an anchor besides his own experiences. I don't like that I can't even verify his experiences. I don't like that his experiences are making him millions of dollars right now when his capacity to relate truth is so miserably in doubt. Because what addicts want is an excuse. An excuse not to trust, an excuse to stop trying, an excuse not to believe. For all the hope that his supporters are claiming he gives to those in the throes of substance abuse, he is offering something else to an even more significant degree: a cop out when his stories don't survive the scrutiny. All someone in the throes of abuse needs to find out is that someone who claimed to make it on his own, didn't. Because then they can stop trying. That's what no one seems to get. You cannot hand an addict false hope and expect them to go the rest of the way. And that's my deal with A Million Little Pieces. I actually hope Frey is telling the truth so that people who need him don't end up letting go of their efforts to get clean. And I also hope he lets go of his badass, hard core, gritty persona in favour of celebrating being the father and husband he is now. Because addicts have no trouble accessing the grit of life. They have trouble accessing the hopeful details. But do we care? No. From Trainspotting to Requiem For A Dream to A Million Little Pieces, we dredge up the darkness in addiction. We try and experience the feeling of rock bottom. We applaud the visceral appeal of an author who can plumb those depths with lethal accuracy. You think any of that is news to the people that really need help? No way. They know it beyond any literary landscape. They've lived that life. But we who are not facing addiction still insist on remaining a voyeuristic, rubbernecking culture. We want to know how much it hurts. And so many people bought into James Frey's depiction of pain -- from Oprah on down -- that nobody thought to see if he was telling the truth, or even more profoundly, if his "truth" was really going to help anyone. We are a society that stares into the darkness to confirm our own tenuous grasp on light. And I'm tired of it. I'm looking into the light for my light. And leaving the darkness for Oprah's club. Really. 12:43:26 AM    well, yes, but...  []

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