James Frey Is An Imaginative Liar

All authors are liars. They are people, and people lie. True. However, what makes things so much worse in the case of "A Million Little Pieces" author, James Frey, is that he went public on the Oprah Winfrey Show and declared all accounts in his book as fact. Oh my God!

The central issue here is that authors are notorious for overexaggerating events in their lives. Who wants to hear that I used to get stoned and sat around watching the Chappelle Show and eating potato chips? Now, should I twist the story to say that I was once a drug dealer who was involved in a shootout with police when they decided to raid my home, or that I spent 2 years in a rehabilitation center fighting to wean myself off of the deadly effects of heroin, I would probably gain more readers.

Am I condoning what Frey did? Absolutely not. It seems Frey just took it up a notch and risked national embarrasment when he decided to manipulate main stream media. What I don't understand is why Frey didn't just write this as fiction and claim that some of the story was based on actual events? That disclaimer alone could have saved him.

Instead, media conglomerates such as CNN, Fox, MSNBC, LA Times, New York Times, USA Today and about a thousand others have begun to use this man as their latest literary whipping boy. Today, the NY Times's Edward Wyatt came out with an article stating that Frey "grossly distorted reality." He goes on to point out that Frey's description of treatment at Hazeldon, the facility that reportedly healed him of his addiction, was "almost entirely false."

So what are we to make of this? Do we simply cast Frey off as a fake? Do we strip him of his authorship or intellectual agency? No. Let him have his day in the sun. Afterall, we should celebrate Frey's imagination. Don't we often promote children's imaginations? Why not adults too? At worst, Frey is a compulsive pathological liar. But aren't we all?