Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.
G.K. Chesterton

Timing.

As I write from exile on my little Caribbean island the day is January 15, 2006, which means that tomorrow is, or was, depending on your view of tense and of mortality, Mom’s birthday. But that’s not the timing I refer to. I mention it because Mom is on my mind more than ever these days. For instance, last Sunday, a week ago today, I thought about Mom while the New York Giants played the Carolina Panthers in a playoff game. Mom, God bless her, was a big pro football fan, especially regarding the New York Giants. I am too, although I am hard pressed to explain this.

The game was not shown on TV on this island, but I kept track of it online. While doing so I imagined watching the game with Mom, at her home in North Carolina. Mom would have been in a little conflict about the game since the Carolina Panthers was her home team, as it were. But she would have been rooting for the Giants, no question. In matters of loyalty, even to a football team whose players have no loyalty to anything except money, Mom was unshakable.

So I imagined Mom watching the game, sitting on the edge of her couch at home, eyes bright, leaning forward, maybe using a bit of body English to effect the trajectory of an errant Giants’ pass, then complaining about play selection, saying they should have given the ball to Tiki, like any dumb ass guy football fan would do.

The Giants lost big, 23 – 0. Mom would have been disappointed that the Giants’ season was over but would have said something to the effect that there’s always next year. She would have said this even had my imagining been in the 2000 – 01 season, meaning that Mom would have known she would not be around for next year. She did not dwell on her coming death, not in front of me. Once I overheard her tell Ellen that she was afraid, though. This made me afraid for a while.

But the timing. Three days ago as I worked on this book I had CNN playing in the background. I often do this, mostly out of morbid curiosity about what new lies are being told, not so much by the people who run this sorry ass world but by CNN itself. I know: a fine distinction, a very fine one.

While I was writing, a promo came on telling me that a writer named James Frey was going to be on Larry King Live that night and that there was controversy that his book, his nonfiction book, his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was not nonfiction,but rather was fiction. Made up.

The timing I refer to is in this. See, three days ago I decided that this chapter, the one I’m writing now and you’re reading later, would further deal with the possibility that this book, this nonfiction book, this memoir, is fiction. Made up. Completely or a lot or a little.The idea that you may think this is a major issue for me.

Larry King Live comes on at 10 PM here, which is very late for me, since I get up early to write, sometimes before 4 AM; I’m usually long gone to nod land by 10 PM. But sensing relevant bullshit looming, I hung in for the show. It was worth it, in the morbid sense.

I read A Million Little Pieces about a year ago, at Pavones. In case you don’t know: A Million Little Pieces purports to tell the true story of James Frey’s life as a major criminal and a complete scumbag and a big time drug addict, and his rehabilitation, how he cleaned up and became a decent guy. Frey does a lot of owning up in the book. A lot of self-reflection. Or so he says.
Wading through all the lies and perception management from Larry King Live – to which I’ll return — and also based on a bit of research I did over the past three days, here’s the story in brief of A Million Little Pieces.

James Frey wrote A Million Little Pieces, which is his first book, a few years ago. At that time Frey was calling his book a novel, fiction. He could not find a publisher; something like 17 houses turned him down. Then one house said they’d publish it if it were labeled nonfiction, a memoir.

Since I’ll soon cop some moral outrage, I’d better do this first: I’d better Put Myself In James Frey’s Place. Here we go: I write a book, a novel, fiction, a story I make up. I sweat over it for a long time. While writing it my forehead maybe even bleeds. No one will publish it. Then, after everyone turns the book down, someone says they will publish it if I agree to claim the book is a memoir. Nonfiction. I agree to do this even though I know the book is not nonfiction. In other words, I agree to lie like a slug. (By the way: I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at the meeting wherein that proposal was made. How it was phrased and so forth.)

Believe it or not, so far I’m on James Frey’s side in this, more or less. I’ve in essence been there, more or less. In the writing of my (first) memoir, In Search of Captain Zero, there came a time when I made sort of a similar decision: In order for the story to hang together, to have sufficient Reader Big Mo, I’d need to do some lying; mainly putting a character in some backstory tales from which he was actually absent. I didn’t make up the backstory tales, just his presence in them. You know this; I’ve owned up. In fact, I tried owning up at the time of the publishing via my Author’s Note, which I tried to call A Note on Veracity. You even know that the character I put in some backstory tales from which he was absent now seems to believe he was actually present in them.
But again: Frey agrees to claim his book is nonfiction when it really is fiction.

As I say, I’m still more or less on James Frey’s side here. I’m not in love with what he did but I’m hanging in with the poor sap because I understand the obsession and pain he no doubt experienced over his book. There is a real difference between what I did and what James Frey did, but still, with my book I was diddling around on the same spectrum, the lying-in-your-writing spectrum. (I have no patience with euphemisms like “taking liberties” or “artistic [or poetic] license”.)

But then, as a result of the re-labeling, of Frey’s agreeing to lie like a slug, not only does the book get published but it’s a howling success. Oprah hails it on her show from here to next week. Literally. First she hails it on her show one week and then the next week she hails it again, this time with James Frey on the show, who she hails as well. She hails him for changing his life so monumentally and for writing so honestly about it. Suddenly the poor sap is no longer a poor sap: he is a celebrity and his book is selling like hotcakes, mostly due to Oprah. (That one person’s opinion can single-handedly have this effect on a book’s fate is dispiriting, by the way. But that’s another story.)

Here’s where Putting Myself In James Frey’s Place becomes a little dicey, in that I have to be careful. There are fine lines, fine distinctions, matters of degrees and spectrum kind-of-a-things here, plus the human frailties we all are heir to. I’m not talking about A Million Little Pieces itself. No fine lines and so forth there. James Frey’s book is a lie. A complete crock of shit from one end to the other. He made it up.

In fact, before Frey’s book was publicly exposed as a lie, I already knew; I knew it was a lie from reading it and I remember the moment I knew it was a lie. Early on Frey checks into a rehab clinic and is sent to have extensive dental surgery, root canals and so forth. Frey writes that since he was a drug addict in rehab the dentist couldn’t use Novocain because Novocain is a drug; Frey describes the agony of this in excruciating detail.

Utter horseshit. Since Novocain is not an intoxicating drug, there would have been no problem in using Novocain to dull the guy’s gums. By this time I was already suspicious of the book’s veracity, but this scene did it. I knew that I was dealing with an author who not only was lying but doing so in an insulting way, since the Novocain lie is so transparent. There’s a word that describes the attitude behind telling a transparent lie and figuring no one will notice. The word is contempt, as in contempt not only for the truth but for the reader’s intelligence. Although my intelligence was insulted I kept reading A Million Little Pieces anyway, out of curiosity (of the usual sort), to see how far Frey would go. I wanted to see if perfect characters would show up to create more emotion and buttress the crucial turning points (that Frey made up) that would result in a perfect, or nearly so, ending that makes you go, “Wow, that’s heavy” Sure enough, this came to pass in A Million Little Pieces.

No. The fine lines and so forth are not regarding the book itself, which, and I must repeat, is a complete crock of nonfiction shit, and an insulting one at that. The fine lines and so forth are in what Frey did next and continued to do next: Frey ran amok with lying like a slug. He went on the talk show circuit and did a major book tour and went way out of his way assuring everyone that his book is true and that everything happened as he wrote it.

One more time: Nothing happened as he wrote it.

But if nothing happened as he wrote it, where are the fine lines and so forth? Here: What was Frey supposed to do? He got sucked into lying like a slug because he loved his book and had worked hard on it and believed in it as fiction and now, suddenly in the spotlight, what was he supposed to do? Own up? Admit he’d been lying like a slug?

What would you do?

Still no moral outrage on my part, even though Frey ran amok with lying like a slug. (He even lied like a slug when no one asked him anything to which he might have to lie like a slug.) There’s still no moral outrage on my part even though I don’t think I would have done what Frey did had I been in his situation. Lying in your writing is one thing, lying about whether you’re lying in your writing is another. But that’s just my view. (You might recall I got pissed off at Frank McCourt for this – the quotation marks issue.)

So there are fine lines and so forth with this James Frey business (and in your life and my life) but eventually there also comes a moment of truth. A moment of truth, a true moment of truth, does not involve fine lines and so forth. A moment of truth is clear-cut and it always involves… what?

A crisis decision.

For James Frey the moment of truth, the crisis decision, came when his book was exposed publicly as a lie, exposed in a way that is inarguable. Which brings me to Frey’s appearance on Larry King Live, and Frey’s crisis decision, which was one of What To Do Next?
Frey had some choices, three, I think, although there may be variations. (That there is choice is the linchpin of a crisis decision — no choice, no crisis decision.)

One: Keep his trap shut. Disappear if necessary. Take a vacation to, say, a monastery in Tibet, where the monks not only have probably not read his book but are not allowed to speak, so even if they had read it they couldn’t ask him anything to which he’d be tempted to lie like a slug.

Two: Own up publicly and completely and then weather the shit storm.

Three: Perception manage the situation: continue to lie like a slug right in the face of the truth. Should this be the option taken, Frey would slide over to the right-hand end of the lying-about-writing spectrum, and indeed the honesty-dishonestly spectrum. In the latter he’d slide into the area inhabited by Lisa, the Moras, plus Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rice et al — the Orwell-as-an-optimist area. Oh. Add Bob Woodward to that list.

Frey did take option number three. That he was no doubt under considerable pressure to do so from his publisher, and probably from Oprah, her corporate PR people, and possibly from others, is irrelevant. The moment of truth, the crisis decision, was James Frey’s and James Frey’s alone. This is another hallmark of a crisis decision – it cannot be blamed on others.

On Larry King Live, James Frey lied about everything, and did it in a way that outraged me; he did it in pure Orwell-as-an-optimist, public relations crisis management doublespeak. In other words, he lied but figured he maintained plausible deniabilitythat he lied. I really hate this kind of lying. Reminds me too much of the love of my life, who used to make a ton of money telling people how to make use of plausible deniability, and who now does it in order to get through the day.

“I stand behind the essential truth of my book.” If the shitball motherfucker spouted that one once, he did so twenty times, often as an answer to a question like this one:

“Did you embellish any events from your life?”

“I stand behind the essential truth of my book.”

Fine, James Frey, but I’m sure Herman Melville would say the same about his book about whaling and good and evil and man’s place in the universe and so forth. Thing is, though, Herman Melville — aside from being above checking his book’s Amazon.com sales ranking — was not claiming Moby Dick as non-fucking-fiction, as a memoir.

Have you gotten the idea that I’m not on your side any longer, James Frey, you lying sack of shit?

Speaking of outrage, listen to this: The lying sack of shit had his mother on the show to help him lie. To help him lie about lying in his nonfiction book. And about lying about lying about lying.

His mother.

You wanna talk about moments of truth and crisis decisions?

You wanna talk about contempt?

But in a sense, the larger sense, it gets worse. During the call-in period, the callers were screened (you bet they were) so none were outraged about Frey’s lying. The callers all said words to the effect that Frey’s book was an inspiration and that they, the callers, stand behind Frey.

Worse still: The guy who exposed Frey’s book as a lie was interviewed. Although he worked some truth into this travesty, he also said that his outfit, thesmokinggun.com, has gotten a ton of emails about Frey and half of them not only stood behind Frey but were outraged that thesmokinggun.com exposed Frey’s lies. Extrapolating: Since about four million people have read Frey’s book, two million of them not only do not care that it’s a pack of lies, but, further, are outraged that the lies were exposed.
Please think about that.

Oprah calls in. Pretends her call wasn’t arranged in advance; she actually says she had to keep calling because the line was busy.
More contempt.

And guess what Oprah says? Come on, take a wild stab.

Oprah says she stands behind the essential truth of James Frey’s book.

By now Oprah well knew that James Frey not only lied to her about everything while she was reading his book (and weeping over it), but she also knew he went on her show and lied about everything again (plus lied about lying), to her and to millions of people. Hoodwinked her and everyone else andmade himself rich and famous in doing so.

And she’s standing behind him.

How could that be?

Because Oprah didn’t want to… to what?

Look foolish. We’re back to that one.

Oprah, the most trusted woman on the planet, pretends her call wasn’t prearranged and then tells the world that lying is okay. This so she wouldn’t look foolish.

Relentless.

My final word regarding James Frey: He’s supposedly been clean and sober for thirteen years, right? People are worried that due to his current problems he may backslide, get into drugs and alcohol again, right? Which could ruin his life or maybe even kill him, right?
Give me his address and I’ll send him a bottle of rum and a vial of painkillers. Get him started.

The above chapter is part of the through line of Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir that deals with beinga writer, specifically a nonfiction writer. As I say in my current newsletter (since I’m not Down South any longer, I have to come up with something other than Down South Perspective as a label), I’m on thin ice with this one; I hang myself out there. If you were paying attention as you read, you already know why I say this: For a nonfiction writer to write about dishonesty in nonfiction writing is almost by definition a precarious undertaking.

Just so you know: I do a lot of owning up in this book.

Maybe too much.

Thin ice.

Maybe not enough.

Hanging myself out there.

Another thing regarding thin ice and hanging myself out there, and I’m not hyperbolizing to get your attention or arouse your curiosity: There are some through lines in this book that could get me killed.

Bear with me for the next few weeks and you’ll see.