{"id":1595,"date":"2009-05-14T00:58:29","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T07:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/05\/illumination\/"},"modified":"2009-05-14T01:00:27","modified_gmt":"2009-05-14T08:00:27","slug":"illumination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2009\/05\/14\/illumination\/","title":{"rendered":"Illumination"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

<\/span><\/p>\n

James Frey Gets a Bright, Shiny Apology from Oprah<\/a><\/h3>\n

by\u00a0Evgenia Peretz<\/a><\/cite><\/p>\n

May 11, 2009<\/span>,\u00a02:40 pm<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"frey-220.jpg\"<\/span>James Frey photographed by Terry Richardson for Evgenia Peretz\u2019s June 2008 article, \u201cJames Frey\u2019s Morning After<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a year since James Frey\u2019s re-entrance into the book world with\u00a0Bright, Shiny Morning<\/em>, which comes out in paperback May 12 (and contains new material, including a bit originally deemed inappropriate for election season). For as many painful events as he has been through in his life\u2014like\u00a0going from the top of book world to national punch line<\/a>\u2014last year was an emotional crucible. Frey got his identity back, suffered unimaginable heartbreak, and received an astonishing, self-reflective call from Oprah Winfrey, the woman who helped make him a superstar and then publicly turned him into road-kill.<\/p>\n

Still feeling like a pariah when the new book came out, Frey was hugely relieved that reviewers put the scandal aside. \u201cI was expecting to get killed everywhere,\u201d he says. Though he was, as he puts it, \u201cslaughtered\u201d in the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a><\/em>, and\u00a0Publishers Weekly<\/em>\u00a0called it<\/a>\u00a0both a \u201ctrain wreck\u201d and \u201ca real page-turner,\u201d\u00a0The New York Times<\/a>,Time<\/a><\/em>, and\u00a0Washington Post<\/a><\/em>\u00a0raved. He\u2019s now in talks with Ilene Landress, executive producer of\u00a0The Sopranos<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0to turn it into a television show.<\/p>\n

Just as his career was getting back on track, his personal life became horrifically derailed last July, when his newborn son, Leo, died 11 days after birth from spinal muscular atrophy, a rare disease that was, at the time, undetectable by prenatal testing and is untreatable and incurable. \u201cI\u2019ve been through some difficult things in my life,\u201d Frey says. \u00a0\u201cNothing comes close to this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having built another bedroom in their apartment\u2014which would now be empty\u2014the Freys (who also have a four-year-old daughter, Maren) couldn\u2019t face the thought of living there and decided to move to Amagansett. But two months later, their hearts still set on having another child, they decided to stay put and adopt. After a seven-month-long endeavor, they adopted a 22-month-old boy named Ellis from a Russian orphanage. \u201cA healthy, awesome, sweet little boy,\u201d says Frey. In the fall, Ellis will begin going to the preschool where Frey volunteers as a tour guide and Class Dad.<\/p>\n

In spite of the personal tragedy, Frey\u2019s life is approaching something he\u2019s not quite used to: happy and normal. Even the scandal over\u00a0A Million Little Pieces<\/em>\u00a0might be finding closure, as they say. Last spring,\u00a0Oprah\u00a0<\/em>executive producer Sheri Salata called him to talk about coming back on the show\u2014which for various reasons didn\u2019t work out\u2014and in the fall he got a call from Winfrey herself.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d had an epiphany of sorts while meditating that morning. It was time to apologize for what she put him through on that fateful day. She explained that her uncharacteristically harsh evisceration of him was coming, unfairly, from her own ego and sense of having been personally betrayed\u2014a redemptive moment fitting, you might say, of\u00a0The Oprah Winfrey Show.<\/em>\u00a0\u201cIt was a nice surprise to hear from her, and I really appreciated the call and the sentiment,\u201d says Frey. \u201cWhen I heard her say, \u2018I felt I owe you an apology,\u2019 I was very grateful. As far as I\u2019m concerned, that part of my career is over and behind me and I\u2019m looking forward to writing more books.\u201d<\/p>\n

Up next is\u00a0Illumination<\/em>, a theoretical third book of the Bible, written from the perspective of people surrounding a guy who may be the Messiah. \u201cIt\u2019s my idea of what it would be like if the Messiah were walking the streets of New York City right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span>[ read at VanityFair.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Vanity Fair James Frey Gets a Bright, Shiny Apology from Oprah by\u00a0Evgenia Peretz May 11, 2009,\u00a02:40 pm   James Frey photographed by Terry Richardson for Evgenia Peretz\u2019s June 2008 article, \u201cJames Frey\u2019s Morning After.\u201d It\u2019s been a year since James Frey\u2019s re-entrance into the book world with\u00a0Bright, Shiny Morning, which comes out in paperback […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation-information"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595","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\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}