{"id":13823,"date":"2025-06-11T06:25:35","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T13:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=13823"},"modified":"2025-06-11T09:17:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T16:17:13","slug":"vanity-fair-james-frey-now-and-then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2025\/06\/11\/vanity-fair-james-frey-now-and-then\/","title":{"rendered":"VANITY FAIR: James Frey now and then."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from Vanity Fair<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Frey Swears His New Book About Very Rich, Poorly Behaved People Isn\u2019t Based on Anyone Real<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 20 years post-Oprah<\/em> debacle, the Million Little Pieces<\/em>author talks to VF<\/em> about his response to criticism, using ChatGPT, and his money-drenched sex-romp murder mystery, Next to Heaven.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY KEZIAH WEIR<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
The author James Frey, now and then. ILLUSTRATION BY ORIANA FENWICK.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If James Frey\u2019s road has been a rocky one, at least the bumps were diamonds. In the two decades since he got an Oprah dressing down<\/a> when it turned out he\u2019d fabricated parts of his mega-best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces,<\/em> he founded and sold a booky content farm<\/a>, dabbled as CEO of an esports company<\/a>, and collaborated with Lena Waithe on the Queen & Slim<\/em> story<\/a>. Also in those years: the rise of autofiction, the death of truth, and a newly unslakable thirst for IP skewering (while sort of celebrating) the ultrarich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter: Next to Heaven<\/em> (Authors Equity), Frey\u2019s first new book in six years, a Connecticut sex romp\u2013cum\u2013murder mystery with what he calls \u201cbig nods\u201d to Jackie Collins<\/a>, Danielle Steel<\/a>, and Tom Wolfe<\/a>. Accordingly, its characters would feel at home in the White Lotus<\/em> extended universe: a cash-poor WASP art dealer, an aggro hedge funder, a Bitcoin-trading drug dealer who idolizes Eric Trump and Kanye West. That their physical descriptions read like a central-casting call sheet (the women: \u201ctall, thin\u201d or \u201cthin, petite,\u201d with \u201cdeep blue eyes\u201d or \u201cbright hazel eyes\u201d or \u201cbig brown eyes like mudpies\u201d) doesn\u2019t really matter\u2014and by the introduction of a \u201ctall, buff, black-haired blue-eyed steaming hunk of Connecticut beefcake,\u201d they ascend to something like camp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book, to which Frey sold TV rights<\/a> before the actual manuscript, takes place in fictional New Bethlehem, which bears a striking resemblance to his current home of New Canaan<\/a>. It has caused something of a stir among members of his social set. At a party, he says, one unwitting attendee whispered to his girlfriend (a countess and equine therapist) that they\u2019d heard the novel was \u201call real.\u201d He swears the characters aren\u2019t based on actual people\u2014although, of their art collections, \u201cI\u2019ve been in enough houses of hedge fund billionaires to know what they tend to buy.\u201d (For other details he turned to ChatGPT, searching for \u201cthe most expensive scotch in the world, or most expensive silverware in the world.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at Vanity Fair<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Vanity Fair James Frey Swears His New Book About Very Rich, Poorly Behaved People Isn\u2019t Based on Anyone Real Nearly 20 years post-Oprah debacle, the Million Little Piecesauthor talks to VF about his response to criticism, using ChatGPT, and his money-drenched sex-romp murder mystery, Next to Heaven. BY KEZIAH WEIR If James Frey\u2019s road has been a rocky one, at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art","category-literary-news","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}