Quote:
Originally posted by AGDee
I'm reading the book now. In fact, it's the reason I'm so sleepy. It's hard to put down once you get into it. I looked carefully at the book today, in light of all the controversy, and found that nowhere did I see him call it a memoir. The reviews on it say it's a memoir (you know, the trailer type blurbs from all kinds of agencies) and the author biography blurb says that it's his account of his 6 weeks in rehab. The things that he says he embellished are all things that had the potential to cause legal trouble for someone. I can understand changing some of those facts for that reason. I think that Federal Judge he was in treatment with fixed a lot of stuff for him and he didn't want him to get into trouble. I don't know how you could be that screwed up on drugs and alcohol and NOT have a lot of legal issues. (after working in mental health for 13 years). The things I like about the book are his dialogues with others, his introspection and his beliefs about what will keep him sober. Seeing how his thought processes changed over time is what I find fascinating. I don't care if some of the details are accurate or not.
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It's not just the "details" -- he turned a three-hour jail stay into a three-month jail stay. It would be one thing if, perhaps, the things that he got wrong were things that could truly be blamed on a fuzzy recollection due to the drugs. For example, the Smoking Gun pointed out that the police officer Frey claimed to have hit with his car remembers the incident differently. That's something I can see passing off to circumstances. But how do you invent an entire three-month jail stay out of thin air and still try to pretend that you told the truth to the best of your abilities?
As for the judge mentioned, the chance of him really doing those favors for Frey, for no reason at all? Pretty slim. The actual reason why Frey's sentence was so much lighter than expected was not because of some judicial interference, it was that, in reality, he wasn't arrested of half the things he claimed to be arrested for!
Dionysus -- I guess, for me, the problem is that non-fiction and fiction are judged on two totally different criteria. We read novels for entertainment, but non-fiction gives people that kick of "Wow, someone really lived through this." For that reason, it's funny, but you can actually get away with more implausible events in non-fiction. If you're writing a novel, it's a lot harder to sell a story filled with cliches or unbelievable plot twists, because people will put the book down and say, "That could never happen." If you're writing non-fiction, people will stick with those exact same cliches and unbelievable plot twists longer because they believe it DID happen.
As a work of fiction, AMLP (and My Friend Leonard) ain't all that great. They're full of stock characters (Frey's work in Hollywood certainly served him here) like the mobster with the heart of gold, the crackwhore with a heart of gold, the big bad negligent rehab staff. While some of you may have liked the writing style, I'm not a fan of overly precious stylistic devices, so that turned me off too. It's a gripping, well-told story, but it's one we've heard a million times before in either true or fictional formats -- its number one draw was not what a great story it was, but "See how much one person can really live through!" If it was primarily made-up, it loses that draw. (Although now it does have the additional pull of "see if you can figure out where James Frey is lying!" -- haha.)