Week 7 Prompt: Book Controversies
I’m a big Oprah fan,
and I was watching her show fairly regularly when the James Frey controversy unfolded. I remember when Frey appeared on the show
after he was outed as a fraud. I wondered
how Oprah and her team convinced/coerced/forced him to do another interview. Maybe they told him they would find a way to
sue him so that he would lose the millions of dollars he made from book sales
stemming from the Oprah Book Club selection?
(Does Oprah’s power have limits?)
The reason I remember that episode so clearly is that Oprah was visibly furious, and Frey was visibly terrified of her. It certainly didn’t seem like he was there by
his own free will.
(Here is a clip from “TV
Guide’s Top 25” that includes a very short moment from that interview.)
I’ve never read any
of Frey’s books, but at the time The
Smoking Gun’s article came out I
had several friends who had. One friend,
who was in the midst of struggling with addiction and who had found inspiration
and solace in A Million Little Pieces,
said it didn’t bother her that it turned out the book was fictional after all. She said something along the lines of, “it’s
a good story, even if it didn’t happen in real life.” It surprised me at the time – and, admittedly,
still does. An unbelievable-sounding
story is so much more impressive and impactful when it actually happened to
someone rather than being a figment of someone’s imagination. I hope that other recovering addicts who
loved Frey’s books tended toward the attitude of my friend rather than feeling
betrayed and discouraged. (I imagine
myself tending toward the latter.)
I visited A
Million Little Pieces’ Goodreads page
today, curious to see what the reviews for the book were like post-outing. It still has an impressive average rating of 3.62,
but its top three “shelves” are Nonfiction, Biography, and Memoir. Perhaps readers, enchanted by a very good
story, are disinclined to surrender belief in its author.
I missed most of this controversy when it first happened, so I appreciate your discussion and link of Oprah's reaction. I'm glad she was mad and Frey seemed scared, honestly. I had to step away from The Smoking Gun article a few times because I was so annoyed with him. I'm also intrigued with the results you found on Goodreads, I didn't think to check there for current responses to the title. I did further digging on the book after finishing the article elsewhere, and apparently they've just begun production of the movie. It'll be interesting to see how the controversy impacts the movie's success or not, and how they'll portray it being based off of the book.
ReplyDeleteI love that you included the link to the fated confrontation on her show. I can't find the full clip ANYWHERE, but I remember I was on her side and then eventually feeling sorry for the guy. He was visibly scared of her! But in the end she apologized. Great response!
ReplyDeleteHi- I thought the same things when I read the Smoking Gun article! At first I thought that it was a betrayal to readers to market the book as nonfiction when so many signs pointed to the work being mostly fictional. But, then I thought of the people who felt comforted by the book; I guess to them, comfort is comfort, whether it is true or not.
ReplyDelete