well, i wish there was an edit option, i'm not seeing one: *others *Good read, if I may say so.

Lunar, I am on page 260 of this book as it is my book club selection for this month. I agree with your assessment of the repitition. At first, I saw it as you saw it, and also as a means of convincing himself of the reality of his situation. But I grow weary, weary, weary of it. And I still have about 175 pages to go...........P//.............. As for the truth of the memoir, well, I can only say that it is probably as true as he remembers it to be. Just a guess, mind. He probably took some liberties here and there as all writers do, but since I've never been in his situation, I am not in much of a position to judge truth from falsehood. It seems unbelievable because the whole life he's led seems unbelievable......like a whole subculture I don't know or understand. PAM

I just finished the book a few days ago. Overall, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was fascinating. But, I admit I did get bogged down in the middle of it by the repetition and the way the book was written. Also, some of what he wrote (to me) sounded far-fetched (SPOILERS AHEAD).....such as the clinic counselor driving him to the "crackhouse" to get Lilly, the Mobster wanting to "adopt" him as a sort of son, the airline allowing him on the plane when he was passed out and a bloody mess. There's quite the controversy on Amazon's (US) reviews right now about the validity of the book. Some people who have apparently spent time at Brazelton (clinic) and claim some of the book is false. It's interesting to read the reviews and different points of view.

kren250, If you could provide some links to the reviews you mentioned, I'd appreciate it. It would be interesting to share them at my book club meeting. On my own, of course, I can locate the Amazon reviews, but if there are others, would you please share them? Thanks.~~~~~PAM

There are also some reviews on imdb.com in reference to the book and upcoming movie.

I just read "A Million Little Pieces" and although I enjoyed it, I did think that it was a bit exaggerated (sp?)in places. I have been in two rehab places (long story), but only one of them had a very few people like the people he met in his rehab. I hope you'll keep speaking to me now you know that I've been in rehab. :-)

lunar----------thanks for the link....I'm not surprised it's going to be a movie... the whole book reads like a carefully crafted script, complete with happy ending.-------------------Lemonhead, Once a bookfriend always a bookfriend. :o)~~~~~PAM

I read a million little pieces a few weeks ago and i seriously questioned alot of things in the book as i was reading. I am a social worker and work with mostly addicts. The immediate thing that got me was how many days he stayed in detox. Detox is usually 4-7 days. I never heard of it being less than 4 days and on the 3rd day i believe that is when he went to the dentist but he was already on the other floor which was rehab. The way he describes himself having severe withdrawals, he would have never been able to go to rehab in that condition let alone the dentist.
The ultimate other thing that i was completely skeptible about was that he was against 12 step programs and religion in ways how to stay sober and clean. These things work proven to work by millions across the country. With no real support system, it just dont work. If he was the such addict, he describes, there is no way he could as he says go to bars with friends be around alcohol and never pick up. it just isnt possible. This is why people that try and beat addiction on their own such as putting themselves in situations that they feel they could handle which puts them at risk for relapse, that is why in the long run if people like him didnt believe in religion and 12 step turn to it eventually and i have seen it happen time and time again. Its the only thing that really works the most effective.

tweety- it seems that you are right:

Have a look at what they found out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fiction Addiction

I heard on the radio today that if you purchased the book directly from the publisher they will refund your money.

Don't publishing companies do ANY fact-checking anymore? Never mind the truth, as long as the thing sells?

I've not read the book, and know only what I just read above on this thread. I have a bit of an aversion to jumping on the Oprah bandwagon, as her books are just so depressing.

That said, I watched an interesting piece on the 11:00 news last night about this book - it's lack of accuracy. I watch the news out of Columbus, OH, which is about 30 minutes west of Granville, where this book is set. The reporter went to Granville and interviewed the officer who was "run over." He said he'd never been run over, and considered the book to be a work of fiction. They showed the police report from the incident, and characterized the man (author) as pleasant and polite. Not a tormented soul, definitely. So much for that "memoir."

I know so little about this book, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it's billed as a memoir, Oprah's standing behind the author, and publishers are refunding money? Totally weird.

Do readers who enjoyed the book feel cheated? Is this a big deal to the book publishing industry? What will the fallout be?

Let's see, fall out?

1. An editor will be fired for not checking the facts.
2. If a publishing house offers refunds, that is, in my opinion, an admission of guilt. People will return their books.
3. Oprah stood behind it because she was protecting her own reputation.
4. Oprah will return to a classics only book club.
5. James Frey already has the money so he doesn't really care about fall-out.
6. The movie will be a success because the whole book was written in a movie-like script complete with all of the core elements - some sex, some violence, bad language, a struggle and a happy ending. (awfully coincidental)
7. Sequel entitled "My Friend Leonard" will not be such a smash hit because the public is now frustrated and think "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me."
8. Frey will disappear into the woodwork like Milli Vanilli with a tarnished reputation but enough money to live happily ever after.

OR,
I could be completely wrong and people won't care about his "poetic license" and think that he, in essence, captured the mind set of the addict and the novel spoke for all those who've been misunderstood in the past.

Me, I won't read or see another movie or book he writes.
PAM

Well written is well written. Didn't appeal to me at all, and was never on my TBR list, but if people like it, they like it. I understand, however, that it is about a man who turned his life around. Thing is, redemption demands honesty. So now he sounds like just another con man with a good story. The great stories are what make cons work, aren't they?

So, PAM, have you had your book club meeting yet? What was the concensus? I mean, did your group feel taken advantage of by the author? Was the well-written aspect of it worth finding out that he embellished heavily?

Since, like Chris, I have not had this on my TBR list, I guess what fascinates me (perhaps morbidly so!) about this whole thing is that he did what he did! I find it incredible that he could write as well as he did and fool so many people who ought to know how not to be fooled. Why do it? Wouldn't it have been just as easy to peddle his manuscript as fiction as it was memoir? Why go to the trouble of creating a lie? Why risk the ugly exposure that's sure to result? I can't imagine being labeled "Milli Vanilli" for the rest of my life! Geesh! What a bummer!

Chris, you make a good point. We get carried away through fiction all the time - authors are great con men/women!

captain backfire,
Thanks for remembering. We had our book club meeting last night and, as you can imagine, it got quite heated. We were split in regard to opinions. Some thought this book was powerful and awe-inspiring. Others (like me) thought it a big scam and had a feeling it just didn't ring true but since I had no personal expreience with addiction, I had no frame of reference on which to base this feeling... it was just gut reaction. Others were on the fence... "yes, he was a bad guy for making this up, but I'm sure others have done the same" and "but he only made up 5% of the story". I was amazed that out of the ten of us, I seemed to be the only one completely angered at his embellishment of the manuscript. One woman said she "didn't care what he added. It was great." Since I am a working, published writer, I was incensed - this is a flagrant ethical breach and Chris in the valley said it best in a posting, "redemption demands honesty". A friend of mine works in law enforcement and she was dumbfounded that any crack addict would have any recollection of the early weeks of rehab. She felt the whole book to be fabrication with a bit of fact tossed in during the boring bits.

That being said, fiction, non-fiction, faction, whatever, it may be a good book for teenagers to read simply because it certainly removes any and all glamour from the drug scene... a modern day "Go Ask Alice" in a very slight way.

An interesting side note. From what I hear, Frey did try to sell this book as fiction to 17 publishers and was turned down. The Library of Congress notes on the title page indicate this is listed as a biography. This man should be held to the same laws as any con man. He conned millions out of $15 by misrepresenting this book. If he did indeed fabricate many of the "expereinces" in this book, I hope he has to answer for these actions. This behavior is a black mark on the entire publishing world.

PAM

This came up for vote at my book club and I voted no, then because I don't like probing into anyone's real soul in a non-fiction book-I will not read Joan Didion's book for the same reason. It makes me feel like a voyeur.
Now I won't buy it because he's manipulating his readers knowingly and with malicious aforethought. I'd rather not be cheated.

I have to say, I'm impressed that so many RP members spotted probable inaccuracies in this book before the book's flaws were exposed in the news. I wonder why Oprah didn't have any suspicions about it? Anyway, good job at thoughtful, critical reading, RPers!

Did you see the editor, the author, two reviewers from newspapers on Oprah today. She was a tad angry because of her reputation. The editor said she too had a root canal without novacaine!!!!???? That's why she didn't question the manuscript.

I say Phooey! It seems as if Truth no longer matters to so many.

As I understand this book was sent to editors as fiction and rejected by the first 15. He could only sell it as a memoir.

Frey is disgusting. I wouldn't want to read any serious memoir or autobiography that was knowingly even 1% faked. Honest mis-recollections and mistakes, OK. Deliberate fabrication, no!

So, "One woman said she 'didn't care what he added. It was great'"? I wish I could ask her, "If it was so great, then why couldn't he get it published as fiction?"

Who wants to be fooled? Not me, and now that we all have Frey's number, I will never read anything by him again, whether or not it claims to be true. It is too bad that he has (presumably) gotten a lot of money out of this.

From Yahoo interent news this morning:

Frey admits fictions, Oprah apologizes
By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Author James Frey confessed to Oprah Winfrey on Thursday that he made up details about every character in his memoir "A Million Little Pieces" and the talk show host apologized to her viewers, saying she felt "duped."

"I have been really embarrassed by this," said Winfrey, whose praise for Frey's book in September helped make it the top-selling book on nonfiction lists in the United States last year.

"I really feel duped," she told Frey on her television show. She said he had betrayed millions of viewers.

At one point early in the interview Frey said he still viewed the work as a memoir, not a novel. By the show's end Winfrey made him admit he lied.

"This hasn't been a great day for me," he said. "I feel like I came here and I have been honest with you. I have, you know, essentially admitted to ..."

"Lying," Winfrey interrupted.

"To lying," he said. "It's not an easy thing to do in front of an audience full of people and a lot of others watching on TV. ... If I come out of this experience with anything it's being a better person and learning from my mistakes and making sure I don't repeat them."

Winfrey began by apologizing to viewers for a telephone call she made to CNN's "Larry King Live" show on January 11, while King was interviewing Frey about the controversy. In the call Winfrey said that even though the facts were being questioned, the book "still resonates with me" and called the controversy "much ado about nothing."

"I regret that phone call," she told her viewers on Thursday. "I made a mistake and I left the impression that the truth does not matter and I am deeply sorry about that. That is not what I believe."

Sitting with Frey in side-by-side easy chairs, Winfrey quizzed the author point-by-point about his book that described his drug-and-alcohol addiction and the people hurt by it.

"All the way through the book I altered details about every one of the characters," Frey said, to disguise true identities.

He spent two hours in jail, not 87 days, and the account of his breaking up with a woman who later committed suicide happened in a much shorter period of time, with their separation occurring while he was taking care of personal business in North Carolina, not while he was in jail, he said.

She committed suicide by slashing her wrists, he said, not by hanging herself.

The controversy over Frey's work has raged for weeks at a level rarely seen in U.S. literary circles, and the debate has even called into question the veracity of other memoir-like works published over the years.

Nan Talese, editorial director from Random House's Doubleday division, which published the book, appeared after Frey and told Winfrey the book went through the usual review process and "I absolutely believed what I read."

"I think this whole experience is very sad. It's...

I have not read the book, but the whole incident begs the question Is memoir more powerful than fiction? The book is obviously a success as memoir, would it have been a success as fiction, had he been able to get it published that way?

By the way, it is difficult to get any book published and the fiction market is probably the most competitive for first time authors. JK Rowling apparently had more rejections than Frey. It is not particularly surprising that someone would go to great lengths just to get their book out there. If he had not been so successfull his lie would have gone unnoticed. No excuse, but I can definitely understand the temptation.

From what I've read he wrote a very satisfying tale of a man who learned from his mistakes to become a better person. He knows what it takes to be a believably redeemed person. His apology sounds like a scripted piece designed to get a convict out on parole. It says all the right things, but I don't believe it.

I thought it was riveting. I read and read waiting to find out how he survied and recovered. Now they say it's all a big con. I watched Oprah yesterday and he didn't seem to have much remorse. On the other hand he seemed to almost have a thought formulation and speech disability so I wonder if he pickled his brain during the bad years. What ever he has done, it would seem that simply adding "based on a true story" would have saved him a lot of heartache and his readers a lot of angst. I just finished reading My Friend Leonard and now I wonder how much of it was fictionalized as well. A lot, I'd guess.

Does anyone remember Rose Red? That one was written as a real-life account of a haunted house complete with a nom de plume to make it more 'real'. I don't remember Stephen King ever getting called on the carpet for it.

The newspaper today described Oprah's audience as "desperate for any story of the fallen and their subsequent redemption". Sounds about right to me. Give them what they want and they eat it up without questioning anything.

It seems to me that the author created a great product that everyone seems to want. Exactly what makes publishers really happy. Why is the story only good/inspiring/warm & fuzzy/whatever when people believe it's a true account? Does that mean it can't be inspiring if it's a novel? Is is only partially inspiring if it's "based on a true story"?

Ell, I haven't read the book, but i think, if I'm reading your post right, that I agree with you. The book could have been published as fiction, or a "based on fiction" book & it would have been just as riveting. But now it will always be tainted as one big lie.

While I suppose I should give Oprah credit for getting people to read, I found both her call in to the Larry King show & her teary-eyed confrontation of Frey after she had received thousands of emails from outraged viewers to be pretty nauseating.

At the end of the day, Frey has a lot of money from book sales & can probably retire to a South Sea island & Oprah probably got good ratings. The loser is probably Nan Talese who will probably be hounded out of the publishing business unless her high powered husband pulls some significant strings.

I saw a little of the Larry King interview with Frey and my first impression of him made me wonder if he could possibly be capable of writing a book. Listening to his command of the spoken language made me doubt it. He used incorrect grammer a couple of times (sorry, I don't remember exactly what he said) and was not at all well-spoken. He came across as not particularly intelligent. A friend who saw the Oprah show told me he used incorrect grammar during that interview also. I really wonder if he even wrote the book himself - though I haven't heard this questioned in the press.

I read this book a year ago and enjoyed it. I am astounded at the reaction it is getting since the "Oprah" show. I think the main issue was whether he spend the 3 months in jail versus 24 hours and only 18 pages were in question. Oprah nor anybody else never questioned that this guy went to rehab and came out a better person. I wonder what would happen if "The Smoking Gun" poked around in any of our business as I'm sure everyone of us has at one time or another "embellished" something in our lives.

Important to remember:
From the Bible. John 8:7. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

It's not that we are all without sin. It's that he presented stuff as fact that he knew was fiction and then wanted and expected us to pay for it. We made the decision to part with our money based on the honesty of his story. Turns out, we based that decision on false information. And when first confronted with the truth, he lied again.

Telling people I weigh five pounds less than I actully do is a bit different than going public with a "memoir" such as he did, and signing a contract to have those "memories" published. I didn't bilk the public of millions when I fibbed about my weight, nor can my disappearing five pounds urge others to follow my example. I hope he's made an example of because this has called into question the integrity of the publishing world.

PAM

Gee, you only shave off 5 pounds, PAM?

Unless Oprah calls, I'm sticking with five pounds. If she catches me, I may have to confess to ten.

Thanks for making me laugh, kathy t.

PAM

First a disclaimer - haven't read AMLP and not really interested in doing so. Having said that I wonder how many "memoirs" would stand up to the sort of scrutiny to which AMLP was subjected? Embellishing or reshaping the truth an art form in itself and most memoirists and autobiographers would be found guilty to some degree of this misdemeanour. Reading a memoir or autobiogarphy as much an exercise of suspension of disbelief as reading fiction. Most as reliable a version of the truth of things as listening to your neighbour explain why his marriage collapsed. The success of all forms of literary endeavour depends on how much the author can seduce you into accepting their own particular view of the world. From what I can gather Frey has done a spectacularly good job of this. He sounds like a deserving case and maybe next time he can get something published in his obviously preferred area - gneral fiction.
The whole farrago a minor squall in the media teacup and will be forgotten about in six months.
In the meantime just more grist for Oprah's media mill. If anybody ever deserved to be duped it was Oprah. Have occasionally seen snippets of her show and an extended piece of her interview with Frey and I can only say well done Frey! An hour or so of being ceremonially flogged by Oprah's flaccid cat o' nine tails of righteousness would seem to be a just exchange for the couple of million he made from her initial endorsement.
Oprah's manufactured outrage and the shared moral indignation and rapt devotion of her audience was laughable. Nothing is more nauseating than when a celebrity looks deeply and meaningfully into the camera and intones a mea culpa for the benefit of the faithful. Didn't know whether to cringe with embarassment or just giggle. I suppose she thinks she has an economic interest in defending her supposed credibility as a moral beacon and literary guide for her zillions of devotees - if only they'd confine it to daytime TV and not contaminate the news with her puerile meanderings. Larry

I didn't read this particular book (drug addiction not my thing), but I have to say that I assess works of fiction much more harshly that non-fiction. Not only has the story to be interesting, the narrative must flow, must be well-written, believable, must not rely on too many convenient coincidences, etc. Whereas I am willing to cut nonfiction a bit of slack simply because it's based on reality.

One of the worst books I've ever had the misfortune of reading has been Peter Carey's "Wrong about Japan". It's a supposedly nonfiction account of a trip to Japan he took with his son, and is even shelved in the travel section. It's badly written and has no content, but that pales next to the fact that the only interesting character in his story (a rather odd Japanese boy who befriends his son) was completely fabricated. I thought it was extremely insulting to the reader, and although I know he is supposedly a good writer, what with "Oscar and Lucinda" and "The True History of the Kelly Gang", I would now hesitate to pick up one of his books because I don't trust him.

There is a genre called autofiction, basically a novel more or less loosely based on biographical facts, and I have read many excellent novels of this type. "Empire of the Sun", by J.G. Ballard, which is based on his childhood in Shanghai and his internment as a young boy in a Japanese camp. "Born Twice" by Giuseppe Pontiggia, which won the Supercampiello (Italy's most prestigious literary award) and is based on the author's life as the father of a disabled son. More recently, "Un secret" by Philippe Grimbert, which has recently been translated in English I believe, is a completely astounding book and almost completely based on true events in the writer's life. It won the Renaudot in France and several reader's prizes, and is guaranteed to make the same sort of splash among English-speaking audiences. I won't spoil the secret of the writer's family history for those who will eventually read this book, but it is well well worth reading.

I just checked: Secret is only coming out in English in March 2007. And while it is listed under Literature (fiction) on the French Amazon, it is listed under Biography on both UK and CA Amazons. Astounding. The responsibility lies with the publisher, I suppose. Although I think the reading public also has a part of responsibility. It must be the popularity of all those reality shows.