James Frey fights back again
“It’s always been my ambıtion to wrıte the most influential, most widely read, most controversial books of all time…”
As the above statement to GQ illustrates, James Frey is, by any measure, America’s most controversial writer. “I’ve always said it,” he adds, “and I’ll always say it.”
Even if you didn’t know of his notoriety, entering his office, you soon work it out. To the left of his desk hangs a picture with capital letters: “PUBLIC STONING”. In front of the desk hangs a 1982 cover of Sports Illustrated, featuring middleweight champion Marvin Hagler. The coverline reads “The Best And The Baddest”. The message is not subtle. James Frey is controversial. And he wants you to know it.
“When I was a little boy, Marvin Hagler was my idol,” he explains of the cover. “He got no respect for most of his career. His fighting style was straight ahead. He took every shot thrown at him, and he kept punching back ’til he won. I honestly feel that’s how I am. I take big shots from people. But I keep going.”
And he’s had to keep going. Rather than shy away from controversy, Frey has embraced it, built on it, made it his brand.
Take his new book, The Final Testament Of The Holy Bible. Frey wrote it, he says, because writing another chapter of the Bible was the “most audacious thing I could think of doing”. It sees Christ returning in Manhattan, teaching free love and disowning all religions. In America, Frey’s only releasing it in limited slip-cased leather Bibles at Easter. It’s not so much a book launch as an invitation to rumble.
Full Fathom Five, a project he began in 2009, works much like an artists’ studio: Frey comes up with the ideas (all young-adult, all precision-tooled for Hollywood), leaving others to do the actual writing. The money is generous if the book is a success (up to a 49 per cent share in all revenue), but brutal if not (the standard rate for simply finishing a book is £62). So far, four book series have been sold, all under pseudonyms. One has been made into a film – theSpielberg-Bay alien drama, I Am Number Four – with others to come.
The criticism has been swift and widespread, and for each accusation Frey has a swift parry: he’s nicking ideas (“Of the 50 projects on the go, two are outside ideas. Every book we’ve sold, my idea”); he’s exploiting students (“Laughable. The average age of writers who work with us is 31”); he’s ruining the creative process (“It’s because it’s me. If other writers were doing it, it’d be, ‘What a great thing, he’s mentoring young writers!'”); the contracts are unfair (“Nobody has to sign. I don’t lock them in the closet”); he’s exploiting people financially (“The four writers so far have earned an average of $225,000 – if that’s me f***ing people over, everybody should hope to be f***ed over”).
Indeed, some criticism has proved positive. A New York Magazine article by a disgruntled Full Fathom Five writer (“she told friends the whole point of the piece was to get revenge”) ended up being good for business: the next week, over 100 writers got in touch.