Friday, September 3, 2010
Day 24: What book did you later find out the author lied about?
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. That's the only one I could think of, maybe because it was big news when it came out that he lied. I didn't care that he lied. I figured it was a novel and while it was based on his life since it was a novel, why shouldn't he expand, elaborate and create when the story line needed it? I never saw or read his interviews with Oprah or anyone else, so I don't know exactly how he presented himself, but if he's promoting his book, maybe it was all part of the show? Who knows.
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I think the problem with the James Fry affair is that he actually wrote the book as fiction inspired by his life events. Later, when it wasn't selling, he and his editor changed it to non-fiction. There's entire characters and story lines which never existed or happened. I didn't actually read it until after all the hoopla so I knew that surrounded it. As purely a work or writing, it's great and I really enjoyed. Knowing people who have struggled with addiction issues, I could recognize so many of the emotions that ran through the book. As a fan of non-fiction though, there is a distinct line that shouldn't be crossed and the creation of characters is one of those.
ReplyDeleteHaving said all that, I think the only real reason such a big deal was made out of it was because Oprah didn't like looking less than perfect.