This was done in the spirit of respecting every individual’s anonymity, which is something we were urged to do while in treatment, and to continue to do after we left. In addition, names and identifying characteristics of all the treatment patients in the book and all of the facility’s employees, characteristics including occupations, ages, places of residence, and places and means of death, were changed to protect the anonymity of those involved in this period in my life. My account has been questioned by the treatment facility, and they believe my memory may be flawed.
I wrote that passage from memory, and have medical records that seem to support it. There has been much discussion, and dispute, about a scene in the book involving a root-canal procedure that takes place without anesthesia. Others involved jail time I served, which in the book is three months, but which in reality was only several hours, and certain criminal events, including an arrest in Ohio, which was embellished. While I was not, in real-life, directly involved in the accident, I was profoundly affected by it.
Some of those include my role in a train accident that killed a girl from my school. I altered events and details all the way through the book. After listening to 2 out of 8 discs, I decided to do a little research of my own to find out the details of what Frey fabricated: I was originally intrigued by this book because I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had conversations with other book lovers and just so happened to get into a discussion of Frey’s Oprah fiasco. A Million Little Pieces does a helluva job capturing your attention with that exact thing. But this semester my creative writing professor was on our tails about recalling the imagery/visuals that words/sounds present us with. Now, maybe it’s the fact that the story that he’s reading requires such attention to vocal details in order to really capture the energy. He does a variety of character voices, gets crazy, yells, mumbles–he’s good. My mother listens to audio books more than I do and we’ve joked about people having dry reading voices. First of all, let me say that Oliver Wyman is a damn good reader. So somewhere in between assisting my mother with various things (as I prepare for her arrival), completing 20-page papers for my semester finale, and driving to handle a few business matters (seriously) with my boyfriend in Houston, I’ve had time to listen to Frey’s “memoir” in my car. Well, during a recent bookstore browse I saw the audio book on clearance and convinced myself to cough up an astounding $4! I’ve opened, flipped through it, and even looked at the back cover a few times.
Although he hasn’t read the book, James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces sits atop one of his shelves. Frey's latest book, Bright Shiny Morning published in May, became a New York Times bestseller.As you know, my boyfriend is the non-fiction fan/reader/book collector and I handle the fiction side of things. Talese later called the segment "mean-spirited and self-serving." Bad blood aside, Oprah and her book club as well as the author himself seem to have survived the scandal. But after reporters at The Smoking Gun began questioning details about his so-called "criminal record" (they later found out he spent just 3 hours in jail, not the 87 days he had claimed), the book once dubbed The War and Peace of addiction" quickly became the literary scandal of 2006.įrey consistently defended himself by pointing out that he was, in fact, a recovering addict, but that didn't stop Oprah from inviting him (and book publisher Nan Talese) onto the show to explain the inconsistencies. Thanks to Oprah Winfrey, who selected it for her book club in September 2005, sales of the book soared. "My clothes are covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood," James Frey began in his 2003 bestseller A Million Little Pieces, which documents how a drug addiction landed him in the hospital, in jail, and finally in rehab.
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