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Say It Ain’t So

Lauren

Remember that guy who always tried to one-up your stories? Or who embellished every stupid story to make himself sound worse or better than he really was? The guy who insisted that he did some blow with a squeaky clean pop band when you know he hasn’t left town in eight years? Et cetera.

James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard, appears to be the kind of liar you love to hate. At the very least, Frey’s definitions of “honesty” and “transparency” are deviant and the difference between fiction and nonfiction is blurred. This is disappointing because I so loved both of his books. His memoirs, billed as patent truth, appear to be laughably embellished, inciting all kids of eyerolling on my part for making James Frey into That Guy. I’m holding out for Frey’s rebuttal, but it don’t look so good.

The Smoking Gun has the details. Filed under “Crime, Or Lack Thereof.”

UPDATE: Salon has more on the Frey unveiling, though it’s becoming clear that this is more about literary schadenfreude than the guy’s talent. And he has talent.

UPDATE II: This is so evil, but Neal Pollack’s take #2 cracked me up. See take #1, from Dada in the comments below.

17 thoughts on Say It Ain’t So

  2. Somehow this doesn’t surprise me. Frey always came off as such a tool in interviews.

    I liked Neal Pollack’s response to him:

    There’s been much talk lately in circles where talk occurs about a young writer named James Frey. I’m tired of him already. Every five weeks or so a punk comes along and tries to cock-block my mantle when he knows full well that I am the greatest writer of my generation or any generation and that no one better captures the anguish of contemporary American male identity better than I do.

    You wanna fuck with my shit, Frey guy? I don’t think so. Because I really don’t give a flying anal gland about Danny Eggleston or Jonathan Safran Fuckface or David Foster Walrus. Not only do I not hang out with them, but I don’t hang out at all. With anyone. No living being is worth my company except for my dogs, and only then because I like to fuck them. Oh, yes, I love fucking my dogs, and then I go to a boxing gym because I love beating up black people and then I fuck my dogs some more. So if you want to fight me, James Frey, then bring it on, because my fists are cast-iron and my screen saver reads “BRING IT YOU BEAUTIFUL MOTHERFUCKER BRING IT!” and my tattoo reads “SUCK MY COCK YOU WHORE.” But it’s not on my left arm. It’s on my cock. Suck my cock tattoo that says suck my cock, James Frey, you whore.

    You eat with your hands and call yourself a savage, Frey? Well, I eat with my face. I just plunge my face into a bowl and eat like a beast. Raw meat. Raw vegetables. Raw unprocessed grain. I brew my own beer and I piss in it and I drink it and it tastes good. And you think you’re tough because you listen to N.W.A.? I was IN N.W.A, motherfucker. Now I listen to Dead Prez, and they’re not nearly hard-core enough for me so I listen to Motorhead, but what the fuck? You pussy.

    You can’t write, Frey. I can write. Check this out. I wrote this five years ago in my book “Addict: A Memoir Of Addiction.”:

    “I open the cockpit door and I walk out. The Pilot wipes his nose because he’s been snorting coke off my Balls. The flight attendant asks me if everything is OK and I fuck her. Outside, it is Night. The wing is straddled by blinking lights. From where I sit I can smell the lights and I want to break them with my fists. So I bust through the emergency exit door and leap onto the wing. Thank god we’re still on the ground. I punch out the lights with my forehead and tear at the steel with my claws. I wish my parents had never made me go to College. I wish that my mind were an endless Chasm and that I could crawl inside. My Balls are blue because I fuck so much. The last time I committed suicide, I hung myself from the neck until I couldn’t breathe. My brain is black my balls are black my heart is made of stone and I love nothing but the rush of hop into my vein and if I could get away with it, I would kill You now as you sit there in your comfortable chair reading this and I kill myself and anyone who challenges my position as the greatest fucking writer of my generation. The flight attendant asks me if I want some Cheese and Crackers, but I cannot have any, because I have swallowed my tongue. It tasted fucking good. I love the way my tongue tastes when I swallow it, and I don’t care if I ever eat again.”

    You think your appetites are bigger than mine, James Frey? You think you’re a bigger rock star and a better writer than I am? Well, motherfucker, I challenge you. I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a tub of acid as deep as the moon. I want a tube of glue that tastes like a dumptruck of peyote. I want a boyfriend. I want a boyfriend. I want all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas, letters and sodas. I want to be the guy with the most cake.

    I want your ass, Frey. Served to me piping hot on a platter. Then I will bite it. And then I will send it back. Not because it’s tough. But because it’s not tough enough.

    See You In Hell, Bitch.

    Link.

  3. Whoa.

    I saw that ep of Oprah and took an instant and inexplicable dislike to Frey. Not to the book itself, or the emotional testimonials, but to Frey himself. I studied his face and just felt highly mistrustful. And I couldn’t explain why. It just seemed that something was just not as it should be.

    Jeez.

  6. I liked Neal Pollack’s response to him:

    Oh, me too. That was brilliant. Thank you, Neal Pollack.

  7. The Smoking Gun says he tried to sell it as fiction, but it was rejected, so he “omitted the fake stuff” and then sold it as a memoir. Hello?! That wasn’t a red flag at his publishers’?

    The saddest part to me was inserting himself into the train accident tragedy– how sad for those kids’ parents to see someone use that incident that way.

  8. “I open the cockpit door and I walk out. The Pilot wipes his nose because he’s been snorting coke off my Balls. The flight attendant asks me if everything is OK and I fuck her. Outside, it is Night. The wing is straddled by blinking lights. From where I sit I can smell the lights and I want to break them with my fists. So I bust through the emergency exit door and leap onto the wing. Thank god we’re still on the ground. I punch out the lights with my forehead and tear at the steel with my claws. I wish my parents had never made me go to College. I wish that my mind were an endless Chasm and that I could crawl inside. My Balls are blue because I fuck so much. The last time I committed suicide, I hung myself from the neck until I couldn’t breathe. My brain is black my balls are black my heart is made of stone and I love nothing but the rush of hop into my vein and if I could get away with it, I would kill You now as you sit there in your comfortable chair reading this and I kill myself and anyone who challenges my position as the greatest fucking writer of my generation. The flight attendant asks me if I want some Cheese and Crackers, but I cannot have any, because I have swallowed my tongue. It tasted fucking good. I love the way my tongue tastes when I swallow it, and I don’t care if I ever eat again.”

    No, no, that’s not good writing. If you like this type of stuff and want to read accomplished prose, pick up a copy of Denis Johnson’s book, “Jesus’ Son.”

  10. A spoiled frat boy exploits the tragic aspects of others’ lives.

    That sentence would be marginally less believable if I had written “frat boy” and “tragic” as proper nouns.

  11. I saw that ep of Oprah and took an instant and inexplicable dislike to Frey. Not to the book itself, or the emotional testimonials, but to Frey himself. I studied his face and just felt highly mistrustful. And I couldn’t explain why. It just seemed that something was just not as it should be.

    You know, I loved the books but had the same feeling. He was, in every way, That Guy. That Guy I’ve always known to never believe — contrived and stupid. But because I loved the books I cut him some slack and figured he wasn’t a good interviewee. I’m beginning to realize why I didn’t like him so much.

  13. I love the final line of The Smoking Gun article, where they let Frey epitomise the irony attching to his next (acknowledged) novel:

    He noted, “I’m looking forward to showing people that I can write fiction.”

  14. I rather love the fact that TheSmokingGun stumbled on the story while looking to make merry mischief with Frey’s criminal mugshots – of which there were strangely very few despite the digging.

    One commenter over at Salon has already raised doubts about Frey’s defensive claims that he managed to “expunge” most existing records (how, exactly? Is there are special dispensation for memoir writers with a bashful streak?).

    But mostly, I’m alarmed at apologists for Frey who insist there is still an “emotional truth” to his words that transcends factual accuracy. I keep thinking of the widely published last letter fragment by one of the tragic miners to his family, in which the man wrote soothingly – and with great dignity – about “going to sleep now” and “seeing them on the other side”. I was moved by their courage and pathos BECAUSE of the circumstances in which they were composed. Take the context away and much of their meaning evaporates – as with Frey.

    (Thanks for the terrific Neal Pollack extracts!)

  15. But mostly, I’m alarmed at apologists for Frey who insist there is still an “emotional truth” to his words that transcends factual accuracy. I keep thinking of the widely published last letter fragment by one of the tragic miners to his family, in which the man wrote soothingly – and with great dignity – about “going to sleep now” and “seeing them on the other side”. I was moved by their courage and pathos BECAUSE of the circumstances in which they were composed. Take the context away and much of their meaning evaporates – as with Frey.

    …Everyone loves a violent asshole, I guess.

    Some of the same justifications are coming up for JT Leroy: that the dupees deserved it because they were credulous and more interested in storyteller than story, that it helped draw attention to the plight of homeless HIV+ transwomen sex workers, etc.

    What the fuck ever, is about all I have to say. “Emotional truth” is what most people find in fiction, even–especially, sometimes!–when it’s presented as fiction. That’s how fiction writers manage to keep readers interested in the lives of nonexistent people: they describe fictional lives that echo our present ones.

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  17. But mostly, I’m alarmed at apologists for Frey who insist there is still an “emotional truth” to his words that transcends factual accuracy.

    Mostly I’m sick to my stomach reading that so many people “love” this book. Did I miss something? A whiny putz writes in a style I would expect from a precocious high school student about things that couldn’t possibly have happened while using gross-out details fit mostly for intellectually lazy frat boys… and people love this book? Intelligent writers love this book? Progressives love this book? Feminists love this book?

    The whole thing leaves me more than a little disgusted by people who should know better, but who lapped up this garbage peddled by the corporate publishing industry to pander to the intellectually-lite masses.

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