Saturday, January 28, 2006
A million little pieces of it does not matter
Author James Frey is in the under fire from critics after The Smoking Gun website pointed out that many of the facts contained in his autobiographical book “A Million Little Pieces” were made up. The book deals with Frey’s experiences overcoming drug addiction and alcoholism. The book has supposedly helped thousands of people overcome drug and alcohol problems.
If you are in the habit of believing everything you read or hear.
“A Million Little Pieces” was published in 2003. It enjoyed good sales, and when Oprah Winfrey named it as the September 2005 choice for her book club, it became one of the best-selling books of last year.
I did not read it. Chances are, I wont read it either. Not because some of the facts contained in the book are really fiction, but because the book does not involve zombies, demons, mutants, or people that have been exposed to a radioactive substance and now have superhuman powers. Lately everything I have been reading has contained at least one if not all of these things.
When news first came out that some of the book was fiction, Oprah defended Frey. She then had him on her show supposedly to once again defend him. Instead she turned on him. Oprah pulled a flip-flop.
She said that she felt ‘duped’ and that Frey betrayed his readers. Frey appeared surprised at the way he was being treated by Oprah. What followed for the rest of the show was simply uncomfortable TV.
I really don’t understand what the big deal is. So Frey made some shit up about his drug and alcohol addiction. Does it really matter? If reading Frey’s book helped you get over smoking crack and drinking vodka for breakfast, does it really matter that some of the details in his book were exaggerated?
What are you going to do, start smoking crack again? Chances are if this book caused you to stop doing drugs or stop drinking, you should have stopped a long time ago.
People lie everyday. Some lies end up hurting people. Remember how we were told that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and Iraq had the will to use them against us? That was a lie and a lot of innocent people have been needlessly killed because of it. James Frey may have lied in his book, but I don’t see how anyone has been harmed because of it. Only positive things happened because of his lies. If one person was able to kick their own problems with drugs and alcohol, his lies were worth it.
Making Oprah looking like an idiot doesn’t count when deciding if anyone was harmed over this book. From what I can tell, that really is the only harm done.
If someone were to write a book that could get me to stop eating too much, I wouldn’t care if they lied about how hot wings they ate in one sitting.
If Oprah wants to get mad at someone, perhaps she ought to look into the mirror. Didn’t she do any research on Frey and his book before picking it to be her book of the month? Why is it that The Smoking Gun could discover the truth when Oprah and her media empire couldn’t? For that matter, why didn’t anyone in the mainstream corporate news media do any investigating into Frey’s book?
Everyone needs to get over it.
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