by Joe Buffaloe
Daily Lobo
James Frey's memoir A Million Little Pieces sold 3.5 million copies since its publication, mostly after Oprah selected it for her book club on Oct. 26, 2005. It has been on the top of the New York Times nonfiction paperback best-seller list the past 15 weeks, selling more copies in the United States this year than any book besides the latest installment in the Harry Potter series.
It is not a stretch to call it a heart-wrenching tale of shame and redemption, full of tragic loss and inspiring rebirth.
But you stand on thin ice when you call it a "true" story.
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For those who still haven't read it, it is supposedly the true account of Frey's stay at a rehab clinic when only 23 years old after being an alcoholic for 10 years and a crack addict for three. It begins with Frey waking up on an airplane with his front teeth missing, a hole in his cheek, blood and vomit covering his clothes, and no recollection of how he got there.
It ends with him leaving rehab as a recovered addict, with an impending stay in jail.
Despite Frey's claim that the only things he changed "were aspects of people that might reveal their identity" and that "otherwise, it's all true," he includes a number of questionable embellishments. For example, in the incident for which he eventually goes to jail, he claims he was charged with felony DUI and felony mayhem, two charges which do not exist in the county in which the crime was committed.
If he ever was sentenced to a jail term, which he has failed to prove so far, it was not for a month, as the book claims. And he certainly didn't read War and Peace to an illiterate inmate while there, as he claims in the sequel, My Friend Leonard. He also said he was under investigation by the FBI for dealing drugs, which is not the case.
Frey characterizes himself in the book as an outcast growing up, the kind of guy who parents didn't want their kids hanging around. This has been refuted by fellow classmates, as has his claim of being blamed by the town or even being involved in an auto accident that killed two female classmates.
Frey's level of addiction has also been called into question, especially since the book is highly critical of the Alcoholics Anonymous system. If Frey was embellishing when he portrayed himself as the most hard-core of hard-core addicts, then he does not have the authority to criticize a system that, in most cases, is the only solution that works for recovering addicts.
In the book, Frey cannot accept Alcoholics Anonymous because it hinges on a belief in some sort of God or at least a higher power, portraying it as incompatible with atheism. Yet he fails to mention the organization Alcoholics Anonymous for Agnostics.
In fact, Frey originally sent A Million Little Pieces to 14 publishers as a work of fiction before it was picked up as a memoir by Random House publishing. The sudden change has an explanation: A large part of the book's appeal is that it is a true story, making it all the more intense and moving.
In a way, this is an example of a publisher hoodwinking a lethargic readership into buying a book. But in another way, there is nothing wrong with this - everything that happens in the book has happened to someone. Addiction, rehab and all the pain that goes along with it are undeniably a part of the real world. Whether Frey experienced these things exactly as he describes, he is expressing a human condition that surrounds us all, and the message of hope is no embellishment.
