Literary Integrity

I've held off commenting on the James Frey Million Little Pieces debacle because, well, I wasn't really sure I had an opinion about it until now.

Here's what I think:

I think he should have had the forethought to include a comprehensive author's note prior to printing about the intermingling of verifiable fact and literary license. In my mind, this is his main error.

With that said, I'm going to come out in defense of the man on one point. As a current student in a writing program, I can tell you for a fact that the memoir, as a genre, has become a very fluid concept. Frey is in no way the first author to take the seminal events or main structure of his life and render it with ficticious overtones, to replace facts with more "true" events that keep to the essence of the story, more than actual events would. In many cases, novels are written as memoirs, and the blurring of categories and genres is very much en vogue in literature. As is the genre I call "conjectured memoir," Girl with the Pearl Earring comes to mind.

I believe firmly in the adage that "facts are the enemy of truth,"at the very least, that facts often undermine the point a writer might most want to convey.

In this past semester alone I worked on a short story that is about 40% true in terms of actual events and 100% true in terms of the emotional connotation the piece renders. I don't know why everyone (the literary community and readers alike) is acting like this is some great scandal.

A point of impropriety and a lack of foresight, I grant you, since one disclaimer would have prevented all of this. But let's ask ourselves:

How many memoirists have, in relying solely upon memory, distorted the facts of their personal history and not been caught? Do we really care? We live in a time when most people are doing their damndest to do away with absolute truth anyway, so this outcry seems a little hypocritical to me.

I know. For some the point is the intentional fabrication of facts. I'm not saying I'm okay with that. I'm saying the man shouldn't lose his literary credibility for this misstep. From what I understand, he's a gifted author who told a compelling story, at the center of which were true events, true things about his struggles with drug addiction. Subsequent printings of his book will come with a note. There. Moving on.

I'll say this. If I were him there's no way I would have reappeared on Oprah. From what I understand, she was merciless. And I understand that, too. Her credibility is also at stake.