{"id":13881,"date":"2025-06-23T14:11:33","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T21:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=13881"},"modified":"2025-06-24T14:15:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T21:15:29","slug":"winged-victory-of-samothrace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2025\/06\/23\/winged-victory-of-samothrace\/","title":{"rendered":"Winged Victory of Samothrace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from SSENSE<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAMES FREY LETS IT RIP<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Inside the world of the notorious \u201cA Million Little Pieces\u201d author, who\u2019s back in the spotlight with a pulpy new murder mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by:\u00a0Paul Thompson<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The thing about working for magazines is you end up in lots of cars with men you\u2019ve just met. And so by the time we pull up to the monolithic black house at the end of a long driveway in New Canaan, Connecticut, about an hour from our departure point in New York, the three of us\u2014photographer Adam Powell; his assistant for the day, a contemplative musician whose high school girlfriend had once grown evangelical about this story\u2019s subject; and myself\u2014have already developed not only a plan for the shoot and interview but a shared set of crypticisms to track its progress. This is work. Still, when we step out of the car, we\u2019re transfixed. Alone in the otherwise empty front lawn sits a replica of one of the most recognizable statues in the Western canon:\u00a0Winged Victory of Samothrace<\/em>, the goddess Nik\u00e9 missing her head and arms. We stare; we riff; we grow quiet again. Without us noticing, the house\u2019s owner approaches from behind. \u201cThe real one is in the Louvre,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Frey has lived in New Canaan for more than a decade, and in this house for about half that time, since the split from his wife of 20 years. The black exterior is in contrast with the floor-to-ceiling white inside. When I comment on the paint\u2019s unusual texture (following Frey\u2019s lead, I had removed my shoes and socks during our trek through the tall grass toward the pond in his backyard), he explains that this is what they use on the tops of skyscrapers. He believes it\u2019s the only material that adequately reflects the sunlight that pours in through giant windows. His collection of art is expensive, abundant, indisputably cohesive. Almost as soon as we\u2019ve finished discussing the real\u00a0Samothrace<\/em>\u2019s prime placement in Paris\u2014we are, ultimately, four people who can picture the Louvre\u2014Frey is posing for photos in the nook of his living room where he writes, in the weeds outside his bedroom window, on rocks that jut from a creek near a friendly bobcat\u2019s lair, face stoic, one or both of his middle fingers raised.This is early May. Almost exactly 22 years prior, Frey\u2019s first book,\u00a0A Million Little Pieces<\/em>, was published to mixed, sometimes tortured reviews but achieved, over the next two-and-a-half years, supernova commercial success. If Frey\u2019s name sparks even the vaguest jolt of recognition, you also likely remember the controversy over the revelation that parts of Pieces had been exaggerated, or fabricated entirely. The book was marketed as a memoir, and Frey had defended it in public as such. Oprah at first lavished him with praise, then later brought him on her show to excoriate him.Since the scandal began in earnest in 2005, Frey, now 55, has given vanishingly few interviews\u2014even when he published\u00a0Katerina<\/em>, his first full, literary novel in a decade, in 2018. But he\u2019s evidently reconsidered this approach. In the leadup to the publication of\u00a0Next To Heaven<\/em>, his pulpy new murder mystery about an upper-crust town not unlike New Canaan, he\u2019s hired a\u00a0renowned<\/a>\u00a0publicist<\/a>; when I visit him, he\u2019s in the middle of the long process of sitting for a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0profile. At one point, he requests that we go off the record so he can explicate why, exactly, he\u2019s opening himself to this media attention and scrutiny. But what he tells me when my recorder is off is virtually identical to something he says when it\u2019s switched back on: \u201cI want my title back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

from SSENSE JAMES FREY LETS IT RIP Inside the world of the notorious \u201cA Million Little Pieces\u201d author, who\u2019s back in the spotlight with a pulpy new murder mystery. Written by:\u00a0Paul Thompson The thing about working for magazines is you end up in lots of cars with men you\u2019ve just met. And so by the […]<\/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":[2,3,4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation-information","category-culture-art","category-literary-news","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13881","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=13881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}