There's a cute op-ed piece in Wednesday's New York Times that doesn't mention Frey's book, titled "A Million Pieces." But ... it doesn't have to. Under the headline "A Million Little Corrections," comedy writer Tim Carvell seeks to correct "some inadvertent errors, omissions and elisions" in a fictitous autobiography.
Carvell, a writer for "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," says:
In writing a narrative, it is sometimes necessary to compress or combine certain incidents for dramatic effect. I did much the same thing in the chapter of my book dealing with my prison term, although in reverse: in the interest of dramatic clarity, I expanded my 1993 arrest for jaywalking into a seven-year stint in Sing Sing for manslaughter.
Okay, it wasn't so much a jaywalking "arrest" as a ticket.
Fine, it was a stern warning. Happy now?
Carvell ends by saying "my life did not, in fact, shatter into a million little pieces. I just went back and recounted. It was six pieces. Consider it a rounding error."
I don't think any comment on my part is necessary.
LATER: This just in ...
Newspaper staff writers are having a field day with Frey, too. In today's Chicago Sun-Times, lifestyle columnist Debra Pickett riffs on Frey's recent claim his story has "emotional truth" even if he made up some parts of it:
Frey appeared on CNN's Larry King Live on Wednesday night to defend his work. And, in response to King's not-exactly-brutal questioning -- 'James, with the kind of incredible life you've had, why embellish anything?' -- Frey admitted that 'there were embellishments in the book, that I've changed things, that in certain cases things were toned up, in certain cases they were toned down, that names were changed, that identifying characteristics were changed.'
But he went on to say that '. . . the essential truth of the book, which is about drug and alcohol addiction, is there. ... You know, the emotional truth is there.'
And Oprah, who phoned in to the show, backed Frey up on this, saying 'the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me.'
Pickett says all this is "excellent news for liars everywhere" ... but especially in Chicago, where the U.S. attorney's office is trying a Republican governor and investigating a Democratic governor at the same time. She suggested at times "truth is a relative thing" to Chicago's leaders:
There is the truth of what you said and the truth of what you meant and, to go along with these two conflicting truths, the long-standing and absolute truth that it isn't your fault if someone else somehow got the impression that a bribe might persuade you to speed certain things along.
Because the truth is that you never told him such a thing.
Outsiders, like certain federal prosecutors, who hold up wiretaps and witness testimony as a superior kind of truth, don't seem to understand the flexible nature of this Chicago-style truth-telling.
But Oprah surely does.
Pickett concludes on a serious note:
The Oprah argument -- that if something resonates, it doesn't matter whether it's factually true -- is an easy one. It makes simple moral lessons out of complicated lives. It fuels myths and smoothes over complexities. It tells stories that offer hope, even when hope is unfounded.
The appeal of Frey's made-up life story is obvious. If a violent, out-of-control criminal hooked on drugs and booze can clean himself up enough to sit charmingly on the couch and share his wisdom with Oprah, then surely all the other addicts out there can do it, too.
And if they can't, they're just not trying hard enough.
It's a compelling idea.
But unfortunately, it's just another Chicago scam.
Again, other than to say I think Debra Puckett is absolutely right on the ethical issues, no comment on my part is necessary.
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