Most of the Truth or All Your Money Back

[ltmurnau]

I always wondered what the term "creative non-fiction" really meant - seems it can have financial repercussions beyond making Wads of Cash if Oprah decides she likes it:

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"In a move believed to be unprecedented, publisher Random House is offering a refund to consumers who bought the non-fiction book A Million Little Pieces.

James Frey's memoir of drug and alcohol addiction and redemption has been challenged as unverifiable and "wildly exaggerated."

On Sunday, the Smoking Gun website (http://www.thsmokinggun.com) published the results of a six-week investigation into the book and concluded Frey has "fictionalized his past to propel and sweeten the book's already melodramatic narrative."

Media throughout North America picked up on the controversy, in part because the book had been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey on her popular talk show.
***

More at http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/01/11/frey-refund.html

Comments

[jodymeme.livejournal.com]

Argh. Who cares? It's the job of writers to make shit up and stir emotion.

[ltmurnau.livejournal.com]

I did not note in the post that last year he sold 1.77 million copies of this potboiler, making it the #2 bestseller of the year. This would have not happened without the intervention of Oprah the Divine, who presented it as a true story.

I know, authors have embroidered their autobiographies for as long as there have been autobiographies, all the way back to the days of clay tablets.

On the one hand it bugs me that a talk-show host is such an arbiter of taste for so many millions of people, but on the other hand it amuses me that a publishing company would offer you your money back for buying something that proved to be bullshit.

But on the third hand (i.e. balanced on the end of my dick), I just don't care.

I did think your JT Leroy/ Pynchon bit was funny, I was just too busy yesterday to stop and comment.

So Ha! Ha!