James Frey does Jesus
If the faux-memoirist thinks he’ll offend anyone by depicting Christ as a whoring drunk, he’ll be disappointed
BY LAURA MILLER
Salon
Apparently James Frey has a tiny man in his head, like some kind of internalized boss, who barks, “You haven’t enraged anyone lately!” and starts cracking the whip whenever things slow down. This week, we learned that Frey will deliver a book he discussed in an interview with the Rumpus back in 2008, “The Final Testament of the Holy Bible,” which will depict the return of Jesus Christ as a drunk who consorts with hookers and canoodles with other men. The book will be published in a limited edition by an art gallery and self-published by Frey “online,” which presumably means in e-book format. This event will take place on April 22, Good Friday.
I know! Shocking, right? Frey says that he expects to “get blasted” for this. The press has happily joined him in rubbing its hands together over the prospect, deploying words like “controversial” and “firestorm” in stories that Frey promptly posts to his website. “I tried to write a radical book. I’m releasing it in a radical way,” Frey told the New York Post. So it’s possible his Christ might be a skateboarder, too.