OK, I lied

I know I said that my last post would be my last about James Frey, but I just. can't. help. myself.

I love you all, and have wanted to give each you big slobbery bloggy kisses at some point or the other, but I am shocked--SHOCKED, I TELL YOU--how many of you think that "it's no big deal" and "it doesn't matter, it was a good read anyway."

Really? Really? Truth doesn't matter?

Mary Karr, author of her own memoir The Liar's Club, wrote this about the controversy surrounding his book:

"I fell in love with memoir when I read Helen Keller's in fourth grade; had it turned out she was merely nearsighted, not deaf, blind and mute, my bubble might have popped."

I was so impressed with her op-ed in the New York Times about it (I would link you, but it's gone "select" and you have to pay to read it now) that I pulled her book off my shelf and re-read it.

I was really impressed, not just by her writing style (which is amazing, and she doesn't randomly capitalize anything), but by the fact that time after time she included her sister's recollection of events and how they contrasted with her own. It gave it such a ring of truth.

I understand several things. OF COURSE memoir, as a genre, means that what is presented is only the author's memories of events. But the author of a memoir CANNOT MAKE UP THINGS THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN AND STILL CALL IT A MEMOIR. Seriously.

Memoir = interpretation of THE TRUTH.

Grrr.

I know that the reason I personally find his blatant self-serving bullshit lies so offensive is because a) I'm a writer and b) I'm a recovering alcoholic and c) I used to be a big fat liar too. When I stopped getting drunk, I had to face the truth--and sometimes the truth was that I wasn't nearly as fucking cool as I thought I was. I had to learn to tell the truth and stand by it.

SZ said it very well in her (?) comment to my last entry:

"What if you read a memoir by a woman who was going though infertility. let's say the book tells in great detail about the clomid, the IUIs, the failed IVFs, many pregnancy losses, terrible emotional pain, and very detailed harrowing passages about what it feels like to miscarry...and you loved that book because you identified with it so closely and had been through something similar, but nowhere near as bad as the poor woman who wrote the book. Let's say it gave you hope to know that someone had been through worse and came out okay.

Now, let's say it turned out the woman who wrote the book was never infertile, she in fact easily and happily gave birth to 3 kids with no trouble. How would you feel? Would you still be able to say "It doesn't matter if it's made up, it was a great story"?

I happen to believe that there's an important difference between truth and lying, and I cannot excuse a liar by saying "but it was a good story". because lies can do a lot of damage."

(emphasis is mine)

Lies can do damage, no matter how fucking entertaining they are.

Now, if you aren't upset at this, don't think I don't love you. We can disagree and still be buddies--just ask my friend Elena. M'kay? OK.

___________________________________

Good news! We can all shop at Target again (except Elena--guess you should get to boycotting--hee hee).

Comments

[bj]

Hey Cecily:

I think you should keep talking about Frey all you want. When I saw the book, before I knew that it was written by someone who thought it was OK to lie if it made for a good story, I thought of you. Because, the notes on the back sounded like some of your stories.

I'll add that there was a time when I thought you might not be for real. I worked through that and decided I believed in you "I believe in Cecily" :-). I realized that part of my disbelief is that in my extremely straight world, the conventional wisdom is that drug addicts and alcoholics (and I don't know any personally, at least that I know of) don't recover. They don't fight their demons and return to the world, and hold paying jobs, and edit the journals that we might write for. They don't do what you and Charlie have done. So, I figured that you might be a lie. I decided you weren't, not sure exactly why, but it seems too true (and you post too many details about yourself).

Frey, on the other hand, would be interpreted by people like me in the same way (that is, he can't be for real because "people like that don't really become like us" -- please note that I don't believe that, just that it's one of the ways that "straight" people like us think). By lying, he's given them fodder for their belief that addicts are just lost causes that we should give up on. Because, you see, he wasn't really an addict, not one who hit rock bottom, but just a conventional kid with a few problems, yeah, we know those people can recover.

You, on the other hand, are the truth (and, though I can't be really really sure that you are, presumeably you can be). You are a truth that people can look like they're gone from our society and come back. Of course you're mad. You should be mad. Frey has told lies about your true story.

Now, I do think that we have to be careful about judging memoirs on the standard that they be perfectly accurate, because that creates another kind of lie, that the fundamental story. For example, you write of losing your job with a vet, and you probably identify it. What if turned out your job was as a vet assistant, instead of a vet tech, or some other minor detail? well I wouldn't think that changed your story. But, there are big details in your story that are important, and those are the one's a memoirist should try to get right. The fact that there are "gray facts" doesn't change the idea that a memoirist should have to judge the essential truth.

OK. I'll stop.

bj

PS: I think the publisher of Frey's book deserves a bunch of the blame. It's their responsibility to live up to a standard, too. And they were not duped by Frey; they colluded with him.

[julie]

Yeah, I really can't feel the old "it was a good read anyway" thing because it's only real (imaginary) strength was that it was true. It's actually really really crap writing. I mean really.

BUT watching Oprah "take him to the woodshed" to quote the Times was super satisfying. Like some of the best television I've ever seen.

[eve]

I think it's the age-old question: Is a forgery of the Mona Lisa as beautiful as the original? If one appreciates the colors and shapes, then yes, because the colors and shapes are the same. If one appreciates the painting for its historical place in art, then no, because its historical aspects are not the same.

To me, whether the stories are made up or not are facts *about* the story (how it came to be) not a fact *of* the story (what it is). If I can glean something of use from the story, then it doesn't matter to me how the story came to be. To me personally, a well-crafted story about someone with Helen Keller's challenges overcoming them is inspirational, regardless of whether or not person with Helen Keller's challenges exists or not.

The above are just my personal thoughts on the matter. I can also understand the differing viewpoints, and I think those viewpoints are extremely compelling as well.

[Amy E.]

I never read the book so I don't have any emotional investment in it but I completely agree with you. I watched him on Oprah and was loving watching him squirm. Now assuming there really was a Lily and she really did commit suicide (doubtful in my opinion) it wouldn't bother me if for example his only falsehood was changing the fact that she died by slitting her wrists to writing that she hung herself. Of if he condensed events that happened over 3 weeks into 3 days in order to make the story flow better. I think that type of thing should be mentioned in an authors note but I don't think it would render what is otherwise a memoir into a work of fiction. But changing a few hours in jail into 3 months! Inventing involvement for yourself in other people's tragedies (the train accident)! Even if these were the only falsehoods in the book (and I am certain they are not) it would be too much. You can't just make up the story of your life and call it a memoir.

I also agree with bj that the publisher was in collusion with him. From what I can tell he tried to sell the story as a novel. It wasn't good enough to stand as as novel so they asked him if the story was true, he said yes and they repackaged it as a memoir. As far as I'm concerned they helped him create the lie and cover it up and should be offering people their money back if they want it.

[Amy E.]

p.s. I loved Neal Pollack's Frey rant. Scroll down to entry called An Hour Of Dangerous Television

http://nealpollack.com/

[libby]

YAY TARGET! That is great news.

Some people have filed a class-action lawsuit against Frey & his publisher for "time lost" reading his book. I guess you can sue for pretty much anything these days...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002760247_frey25m.html

[Shelli]

I loved this line--(which is amazing, and she doesn't randomly capitalize anything)! You are amazing. And hilarious.

[Sophia]

I can't call myself a writer past two published journal articles and a bunch of Will Never See the Light of Day poetry and I never read Frey's book. But as an alcoholic I would be very angry that this guy is the image of addiction and recovery that the general public reads.

alcoholics have problems with honesty and the truth. That's why the Big Book has phrases like "searching and fearless moral inventory", "rigorous honesty" and "painstaking in this phase of our development". The hope is that following the suggestions of the program we can break free from this character defect.

Frey is what I would call a dry drunk. Someone who is not actively using but hasn't put the work in treating the mental and spiritual aspects of this disease. There are lots of dry drunks out there (some of them my relatives) and yeah they can spend the rest of their lives that way: not drinking but also not growing

The problem is that this particular dry drunk decided to indugle his grandiousity and his need for attention and put his stuff out there. And because he hasn't worked a program; his book was like adding miracle gro to his character defects.

And because 98% of us like to remain ANONYMOUS (hence the term Alcoholics Anonymous) the general public aren't going to hear our miracles. They're going to read this guy and think we're all like him. And that offends me.

If I want a good read of things that are not real I'll read Marion Zimmer Bradley or Isabel Allende.

Sorry if this is a rehash of previous posts just had to put my nickel in

[Ellen]

Well, exactly - if you're going to make the stuff up, call it fiction and have an end to it.

[victoria]

You know, I didn't really understand why everyone was all freaked about Frey until I remembered something that happened to me.

My civil procedure professor in law school, who also taught ethics, liked to say to the class, "Honesty is a habit." She especially emphasized this when discussing one case in particular of an attorney who'd been sanctioned for suppressing evidence during discovery.

She was implicitly holding herself up as a paragon of rectitude. She was also implicitly telling us to trust her. "I'm a good person, I tell the truth, and you should listen to me and you should all go out and practice law with my shining example to guide you," was more or less her message.

Then she went and lied to us about what would be on the final exam. She WENT OUT OF HER WAY to lead us to believe that certain topics would not be on the final, and then we were confronted with questions about PRECISELY those topics.

Now, I know that compared to something like struggling with addiction and relying on someone else's personal history to help you in your life-or-death struggle with your disease is a lot more serious than a law school final. So I recognize that my story isn't as grave as those of addicts who'd read and believed Frey.

But I still remember how outraged we all were, and I know that to this day, I would like to see that professor humiliated in the way that Frey is now being humiliated. I trusted her. She told me that she was honest, and then she lied to my face.

Come to think of it, she was also probably an "addict." We were all pretty sure that she was suffering from anorexia. Maybe people who chronically lie to themselves in order to practice their disease lose the ability to tell the truth to anyone? I don't know. But I do know that even an event as relatively trivial as the one I'm describing leaves me angry even today, ten years later. It's the combination of the public face of "integrity and honesty" while deliberately deceiving people who will foreseeably rely . . . gah.

[Jenn]

Ok, I was one of the one's who said it wasn't a big deal. I completely get your point though, and am now more inclined to see it your way. But I thought that for two reasons. One, my book DID say it was fiction/memoir on the back cover which I took to mean it was based on truth, but also with made up stuff in it. Granted, it seems now like a hell of a lot more was made up than truth. Two, I likened him to my father, who is what Sophia above called a dry drunk. He went to AA, but he didn't DO AA. This is the type of behavior I would expect from him, and it doesn't surprise me in Frey.

I didn't read the book though and think that all alcholics are like Frey though. In fact, he spent most of the book trying to point out that he was DIFFERENT from everyone else.

Plus, it wasn't a very good book anyway, truth or fiction.

[Elena]

1. Yep, we can disagree and still be buddies!

2. Something about James Frey's body language on the Oprah show didn't sit well with me back in September. I'm not overly surprised the book turned out to be a farce.

3. Thanks for the heads up on Target!! I will avoid it like the plague - although interestingly none of the Targets around here have pharmacies - but it's the principle! : )

[Brenna]

I haven't read through all the comments so someone may have brought this up before, but I just finished reading Harry G. Frankfurt's book "On Bullshit" and his words seem to fit Frey's writing perfectly. He talks about how bullshit is worse than lying, because at least a liar cares about the truth in his active effort to cover it up. Someone spouting bullshit has no concern for the truth at all. It might be true, it might not. It's that "who knows and who cares, it sounded good when I wrote it" kind of attitude that makes Frey's writing so disturbing to me.

[ivyblogs]

Over at Kos there was acutally a post taking Oprah to task for telling off poor James Frey for being a big fat liar when she should be telling of W for all his lies. Because what's a little book lie compared to an entire WAR! Huh? We're depending on Oprah to take back America now? People commenting in that post were really mad at her for being so mean to Frey. I don't get it. He took other people's pain and used it to make money. What a turd.

Hey- I saw Honkey Tonk Badonkadonk on the country music channel and thought, because I'm fat and all, that maybe those butts looked more ample to other people- because they weren't very impressive hieners from my point of view. Glad to know it wasn't just me. And what a terrible song! "She's got it goin' on, Like Donkey Kong..." Donkey Kong!?! I played it for my husband and he saidm "If Johnny Cash were alive, he'd kick the shit out of that guy."

[Suzanne]

I feel much the same way about James Frey as you do. But for some odd reason, hearing Oprah put the smackdown on him made me feel, well, sorry for him. He was just so pathetic trying to make excuses. As much as I detest lying and hate that he took possibly someone else's truth and made it his own, I think the biggest mistake he made in this whole debacle is BETRAYING THE OPRAH. My goodness, how stupid could he be to think he could gain such notoreity courtesy of THE OPRAH and NOT be exposed?

I have fears about Mr. Frey's rapid fall from grace. I really think this guy never hit bottom before his "recovery" and that this may very well end up being his bottom. I have visions of him becoming an even bigger headline as a result of his public humiliation. And that makes me sad for him.

[Anne]

You know if Fry had said this was a work of fiction based on real events that happened in his life everything would have been fine with me, but like you the fact that his book is a memoir = a factual/truthful account well that’s a whole different situation.

In a way I’m sorry (and a little relieve) that I’m not teaching this semester. I teach a college level research methodology class for freshmen where we talk about things like credibility, authority, plagiarism, etc. and Fry’s book would have fit in well with class discussion. BUT I’d be sorta afraid of what some of the responses would be I’m sure there would be several students who would think it was no big deal.

And can I just say my Target loves grows! AND it looks like we may actually really and truly get a Target here in Hawaii! I’m fricken estatic!

[jennifer]

yup, the dude is scum. keep on yellin'. what's the point of calling it a memoir if it's fiction? duh.

plus, TARGET ROCKS. because if a pharmacist won't even refer a customer to someone else to have the prescription filled, then they are, essentially, not doing their JOB. why is this even in question?

i know, i know. preaching to the choir.

[Missy]

C -- you should read the post about Oprah vs Frey at pamie.com. It has an interesting perspective on how writers/comics view their lives and how blogs can play a part. Had some very valid points.

[Tonya]

"I had to learn to tell the truth and stand by it." I wish I could get my dad to realize this. I cannot swallow lies, lived with 'em during my childhood and HATED it (my dad is a compulsive liar; *nothing* is mundane with him). Kudos to you for making a well-stated point.

[CJ]

Oh its your blog - chat about what you want!

I think that it matters to some that its all lies, and it doesn't matter to others - and I'm fine with that. I still want to read the book but its not at the top of my to-read list.

I agree the truth does matter, but I think what really matters is what your reading the book for. It never should have been listed as a memoir...

[SZ]

Whoa, I just got Blogged!

I am blushing and feeling special over here. And yes you guessed correctly that I am a Her.

(In the spirit of full complete honest disclosure I feel compelled to just note that I've never attempted to get pregnant, so I have no clue if I'm fertile or in-, and if I remain child-free I guess it won't matter, will it? I promise not to write any books on the subject, in any case.)

[Christine]

I just wanted to say that "Liar's Club" is one of my favorite books and I love Mary Karr! I cry everytime I read it. It was so cool of you to quote her.

She is amazing!

[Lisa S (et al, aka Stolidoli)]

Cec - haven't actually commented in a while - blech - sick sick sick - but wanted to chime in that I agree 100% about Fry. Haven't read it, and interestingly, I might still, but will be glad to be doing so knowing that it's made up.

Also, I'm thick...did you say that you did or didn't decide to do the CVS, and nuchal, etc? I think I remember you deciding against the CVS, but I can't remember where you stood on the nuchal. Had my NT last week and may get results tonight - never had this test before so the jury's out for me - just wondering how you felt about it.

Give Tori Anne my best. ;)

[Susan]

AMEN!

[Julie]

I am TOTALLY with you here. Some lies may not really be a big deal, but this one IS. This is the thing, when Oprah aired her first show, there were people on there that had read this book and it had CHANGED their lives. They were inspired, and decided to get help for their addictions. What a wonderful thing. They had read this book and thought if he had been through all of that hell and managed to come out of it alive and sober, so could they. Now, I have not been there, but I can just imagine how CHEATED these people feel at this point. Their inspiration to get their lives together is nothing but a liar. I think the damage he has done is unforgiveable, and I, for one was thrilled to see Oprah tear into him!!