Tag Archives: James Frey

Yeah, that happened ;-)

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This is fun: The Mississippi Review has published an edition of Freymoir-inspired short stories.

Here’s an excerpt from editor James Whorton Jr.’s intro:

We talk about the various narrative genres — novel, memoir, short story, straight journalism — as though these categories have a separate existence from the particular works they describe. Credibility does not reside in the genre, however, but in the person of the writer. Books don’t lie to us, people do: we’ve been lied to by neighbors, Presidents, and novelists alike, and skepticism will never be made obsolete by any refinement of the literary categories. It will always be indispensable both to citizenship and to literacy.

Via Emerging Writers Network.

Esquire circles back

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Andrew Chaikivsky has written a piece for Esquire on Tim Barrus, aka “Nasdijj.”

Equire published a 3000-word article purported to be written by a Navaho in 1999. The article launched a minor literary career — until LA Weekly revealed the author’s true identity last January.

I’m not sure the new Esquire piece really answers the question “why” but it certainly adds some more color to the tale.

I blogged about Barrus previously here.

Speaking of acting like a rock star

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Publisher’s Marketplace offered up this little gem in today’s e-newsletter, about a new LA Times story on James Frey:

The LAT primarily rehashes basic Frey facts, though they do note with amusement that at one point Frey had a “class Hollywood fit” when a screenwriter hired by Warner Bros. wanted to change some of the events in the adaptation of A Million Little Pieces. “Frey said they didn’t have the right to alter the facts in the book, the observer recalled this week. ‘How could they do this? This was his life! How could they change the facts of his life?’ Eventually, Frey fired his agency.”

I love it!!! Who needs sit coms when reality dishes up juicy bits like this???

The “literary assumption of victimhood”

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Wow. I swear, that phrase was on the tip of my tongue, and I discover that it’s been said. By “the British writer and psychologist Anthony Daniels” (aka Theodore Dalrymple) and quoted in a Washington Post piece by Anne Applebaum, who notes that James Frey is only the newest in a history of lying memoirists:

These fabricators reinvent themselves not as heroes but as victims, a status they sometimes attain by changing their ethnicity. Among them are Bruno Grosjean, aka Binjamin Wilkomirski, whose touching, prize-winning, “autobiographical” tale of a childhood spent in the Majdanek concentration camp turned out to be the fantasy of the adopted son of a wealthy Swiss couple. Another was Helen Darville, aka Helen Demidenko, whose touching, prize-winning “autobiographical” tale of a Ukrainian girl whose father was a former SS officer turned out to be the fantasy of a middle-class British girl living in the suburbs of Brisbane, Australia.

Applebaum next mentions Nasdijj, who was outed last week by Matthew Fleisher at LA Weekly. Nasdiff — real name, Tim Barrus — had been posing as a Navajo memoirist. To much critical aclaim.

Fleisher interviews a real Navajo who mentions that Nasdijj isn’t even a real name in the Navajo tongue of Athabaskan. It’s gibberish.

Alrighty, then, here are my questions. What would drive a writer to assume the identity of a martyr in order to attract attention? Is it a variation of Munchausen syndrome? Or are these people simply afraid to achieve excellence as an expression of personal triumph? That is, is this a way for gifted writers to avoid feeling guilty about their gifts?

More posts on James Frey here, here, and here.

Update: Esquire wrote a piece on Barrus…

Freying deals

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Last Friday, Publisher’s Marketplace reported in their e-newsletter that Riverhead, a Penguin subsidiary that had contracted with James Frey to write two more books, is having second thoughts: “The ground has shifted. It’s under discussion.”

Today, Publishers Lunch says that a movie deal based on “A Million Little Pieces” is also in jeopardy:

Warner Bros. President Alan Horn said Friday “We’re reevaluating our position on what to do” about the planned film adaptation of James Frey’s A MILLION LITTLE PIECES.

The LA Times says Frey received a $125,000 option and another $150,000 to write the screenplay, and would be due $425,000 if the movie gets made. Warner’s had been planning on shooting the film this spring.

Hmmmm. I guess Frey’s happy ending isn’t so real, either . . .

It’s fiction . . . it’s a memoir . . .

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No: it’s a Freymoir!

Even better: we’re now using cathartic television to help us recover from the trauma caused by . . . cathartic television. Oprah feels “duped.” Frey ‘splains it all was a “coping mechanism.”

Meanwhile, back in the real world, A Million Little Pieces languishes at #4 on Amazon.

No word on whether Amazon plans to re-tag the book as Literature and Fiction instead of Biographies and Memoirs. Or get rid of the now-embarrassingly-dated editorial reviews.

(Gawker live-blogged the show, if you’re interested in a minute-by-minute.)

Update: Also meanwhile, my dog training book is enjoying an Amazon ranking dip so deep it’s scraping barnacles off its belly. Maybe I should post about how naughty my dog is???? Secret’s out! I caught her gnawing a wooden block today! That is NOT a chew toy!

Crime pays, lol

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Okay, so the blogosphere is abuzz now with the revelation that James Frey’s best-selling A Million Little Pieces, billed as a “memoir,” is actually “made-up-oir.”

From Smoking Gun:

Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey’s book. The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw “wanted in three states.”

In addition to these rap sheet creations, Frey also invented a role for himself in a deadly train accident that cost the lives of two female high school students. In what may be his book’s most crass flight from reality, Frey remarkably appropriates and manipulates details of the incident so he can falsely portray himself as the tragedy’s third victim.

Am I the only one whose mind jumped associatively to the ruckus over Primary Colors?

Moral of the story: when you’re drafting that proposal for your non-fiction book, be sure to include a few ideas for some post-publication shell-games to titillate the media, embarrass at least one public figure, and keep that title o’ yours high up on the NYT bestseller flagpole ;-)