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Hoopla
On Frey
With
the cascading accusations swirling around James Frey’s “A Million Little
Pieces”, I thought I’d drop in my two cents from dreary little Oklahoma. As writers know, artistic license must be a
part of any endeavor of a work of art.
Lies must occur because the mundaneness of real life is just not that
exciting.
With
a memoir, at least for me, the story becomes secondary. With this type of piece, especially with the
drinking and pills and how they were brought down like a hammer in the amounts
of consumption, Frey was doing something extraordinary. For this I’d like you to consider
Hemingway. While he is considered a
great writer in academia and in literary history, I find that his stories are
at best average. And while I may offend
a lot of people that genuflect at his altar, his stories are not what we fell
in love with. He was a rugged author
that for his time, lived a life, all true or not that most men wished they had
the courage to live.
Frey
in modern day was and is trying to build a literary legend of himself, though
the rehab and redemption makes me take some of this back. Although “On the Road” by Kerouac was a
fictional piece, his received legendary position in the literary hierarchy for
his way of life. Most believed he’d
lived all of it, though those who knew him said pool hall scenes with Neal
Cassidy were just that, shooting pool and drinking beer.
Jack
London never led huskies into a snowy wilderness. He would sit in bars in the Yukon and listen to the others that
lived it every day. But London, as we
picture him, is to be extraordinary, a testosterone driven male, the throwback
to the hard driven, drunk, liquored up author that we all think he was. And you can’t fault Frey for wanting some of
this.
I
honestly don’t care if he lied. It’s a
damn good book. I know he created a lot
of envious energy in New York among the literary elites, which is probably the
source of the flogging he’s receiving now.
But those cold, concrete, sedate WASP’s needed a fire under them. A good purge of their staunch
encampments. I think most of the
criticism comes from “why didn’t I think of writing that?” mentality. And then the small fame or infamy (pick your
poison) that he enjoys just set his jealous critics over the edge.
Frey
can’t be faulted, he’s human, which is all we can expect. Fiction, memoir, whatever, everything that
is written is painted with the fine line of subjectivity. In laymen’s terms, no one wants to read
boring shit. The world is full of
boring books written by boring authors that have received accolades from
well-connected peers. It was time for a
man like Frey to set the house on fire.
And
the Oprah viewers just need to grow up into adults. Shocked and dumbfounded at such lies, I wonder what type of
Pleasantville town they live in. No,
children need not apply. At least in
the real world or in this instance the naked ambition of an author.
Leave
Frey alone, he’s only trying to build a myth.
Which is secretly how any writer worth his weight would like to be
remembered.
P.L. George
E-mail P.L. George
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