Enter the Frey
Michael Lallo
September 17, 2008
James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning proves his career is not in a million little pieces.
ON THE first page of Bright Shiny Morning is what appears to be a standard disclaimer: “Nothing in this book should be considered accurate or reliable.”
But the author of this novel is James Frey, the drug addict turned “recovery super boy” who made Oprah very, very mad. Who was vilified by The New York Times. Who was hounded by reporters and denounced as a literary fraud for fictionalising parts of his memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Which is why those first 10 words are no ordinary disclaimer.
“That sentence is really just me raising my two middle fingers and saying ‘I’m going to do what I want and I’ll do it how I want’,” Frey says from his hotel room in Sydney. “And I don’t care what the people who believe it’s their job to decide what is and is not literature think.”
In any other writer, this couldn’t-give-a-damn attitude might seem contrived. But with Frey, it’s real — you don’t recover from a media crucifixion to write a critically acclaimed novel without a tough skin.
And Bright Shiny Morning is as bold as it is big. The sprawling, 500-page epic features dozens of characters, from a closeted film star to an alcoholic tramp. The central character, however, is the city of Los Angeles.
“Tolstoy did it with St Petersburg, Dickens did it with London and Hugo did it with Paris,” Frey says. “But nobody had even attempted it with LA. I think the film and entertainment industry looms very large over that place. Writers and artists from LA often struggle with it — how can you be serious but also be from the place where they made Iron Man?”
LA’s ritzy veneer is just one of its many facets explored by Frey, with the immigrant underclass, homeless drifters and suburban homemakers all fleshing out this portrait of a city.
Not surprisingly, it’s also the most heavily vetted book HarperCollins has ever published. Before it was released, Frey was ordered to verify every piece of historical trivia scattered throughout its pages. About three-quarters is factual and the rest he made up, leaving the reader to guess what’s real.
Although he spent two years writing it, Frey didn’t find a publisher until it was finished. His previous publisher dropped him after the A Million Little Pieces scandal erupted in 2006.
That scandal was briefly reported around the world, but in the United States it took on a life of its own. Even Dick Cheney shooting his pal in the face failed to knock Frey off the front pages. His crime, as revealed by The Smoking Gun website, was to have exaggerated or made up parts of his best-selling book about his recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. The three months he spent in prison turned out to be three hours. He falsely presented himself as a victim of a real train crash that killed two girls. And there was no run-in with the Ohio police.
Frey isn’t the first memoirist to take creative liberties — but he is one of the few to have his work become an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Initially, the talk show queen stood by him, dismissing the furore as “much ado about nothing”. But when Oprah’s fans turned on her, she turned on Frey, hauling him onto her show to explain himself. Relentlessly, she interrogated and admonished him while the audience jeered. And now that Oprah was part of the story, every newspaper and television station in the country was covering it.
Does Frey suspect her about-face was actually motivated by a desire to save her own hide?
“You’d have to ask Oprah that,” he says. “I’m not going to speak for her.”
But he does believe the whole affair was little more than a beat-up. “It was totally media-driven,” he says. “The statistics of the (reader lawsuit) bear that out. Only 1700 of 4.5 million eligible people asked for their money back. If that’s my customer satisfaction ratio, I’m fine with that.”
And although the book was printed in more than 30 languages, not one of his international publishers dropped him. Still, the ordeal took its toll, forcing Frey to seek refuge in France for two months.
But judging by his next novel about a New York man who believes he is the messiah, he has no intention to play it safe.
“I want to explore how religion has been used and distorted in nasty ways,” he says. “Under Bush, we’ve seen the gradual erosion of the separation of church and state. I’m not going to let somebody who believes in a god that I don’t believe in tell me that I have to live my life in a certain way. The book is going to be a statement on religion and belief, and tolerance and intolerance.”
It’s easy to imagine that writing fiction must be liberating for Frey — although he’s not so sure.
“You know, I just write books. I didn’t approach Bright Shiny Morning any differently to any other book. My goal, every time I sit down, is to create a work of literary art. And whatever the publisher calls it — whatever they stick on the side — is irrelevant.”
James Frey will speak at 6.30pm tonight at Readings Hawthorn, 701 Glenferrie Road. Bookings: 9819 1917