Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Into The Freying Pan

A few weeks ago my buddy Matt turned to me and said, "Dude, you have got to read this book!" In fact, Matt went on for a few minutes discussing the vividness of the novel, a memoir of a two-time loser and drug addict. I agreed to take it on once he was done with it.
The book was "A Million Little Pieces".
If you haven't been living in a cave in Afghanistan then you know about author James Frey's dramatic implosion after www.thesmokinggun.com revealed that many of the "facts" in his memoir were huge lies. The The Times chimed in with this piece:
Needless to say, I no longer plan on reading this book.
And this is a shame, really. I trust Matt's opinions on books and we have had quite a few dicsussions in our work-pod about the novels that we enjoy. I know that a recommendation from Matt means a quality read and given his enthusiasm for this book I knew that I was in for a winner.
I could sit here and type on about the ludicrous nature of publishing and the lack of fact checking. I could go on and on about the double-edged sword that is "Oprah's Book Club" and I'm sure that I could rant on about Frey's inability to see past his own lies and ultimately, tragically, becoming as much of a loser as his biography painted him to be, albeit for different reasons.
Nope, instead I will save my valuable reading time and read my newer than new hardcover copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird"; a novel that I have never, ever read. And then I might put pen to paper and do some more work on my own novel which is a work of fiction and in no way shape or form will ever be held aloft by Oprah for all to see.

2 Comments:

Blogger Summer Ryan Doyle said...

and the "truthiness" parade marches on...

10:15 AM, February 03, 2006  
Blogger Cynthia said...

Besides, after growing up with an addict, knowing addicts, reading stories and hearing about other addicts, not reading one more book by an addict may be the most intelligent thing I could do anyway.

At least he has the addict excuse for lying...others are just plain lazy.

8:47 PM, February 05, 2006  

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