Pundits attack author Frey and unhappy reader sues
By Arthur Spiegelman
Fri Jan 13, 4:54 PM ET
Pundits and publishing experts furiously debated on Friday whether author James Frey should pass off his memoirs as true when he apparently made up key details but one reader wants a judge to decide the issue.
Saying they were acting on behalf of Pilar More, a mother of two, who felt cheated by the revelations about the truthfulness of "A Million Little Pieces," the Chicago law firm Dale and Pakenas filed suit in a Cook County, Illinois, court against the book's publishers, alleging consumer fraud.
The suit seeks status as a class-action lawsuit and lawyer Thomas Pakenas said it might take up to 60 days to get a decision. The suit seeks unspecified damages.
He added, "If somebody sells you a cashmere jacket and it turns out to be polyester, you would feel cheated, right? And even if the collar and lapels were cashmere, it still would be consumer fraud. To defend the book as telling the quote 'emotional truth' is just crap."
A spokeswoman for the book's publisher, Doubleday, a division of the Random House group, said, "We are confident we will be able to successfully defend this action, but as a matter of policy we do not comment further on pending litigation." Random House is a unit of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG.
She also said future editions of the book about Frey's long road back from alcohol and drug addiction would contain an author's note but declined to give details.
In an interview on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Wednesday, Frey admitted embellishing some details of the book, but insisted that was part of the memoir-writing business. He also said that "the emotional truth is there."
His insistence that people who write memoirs are not writing what he called journalistic truth touched a raw nerve, especially among journalists, editors and writers who publicly question whether writing a memoir should be a license to lie.
Many were upset the publishers had defended the book because it had a large impact on millions of readers who felt themselves inspired by Frey's story of his recovery.
The New York Times in an editorial on Friday entitled "Call it Fiction," said, "Even in a nation like ours, which is crazy for personal redemption, readers are still willing to distinguish between truth and fiction."
The Times admitted that "a memoir is, indeed, a loose and slippery genre -- as loose and slippery as memory itself. And there's a difference, even in publishing, between the lies we tell about ourselves and the lies we tell about others."
UPROAR ENSUES
The uproar over Frey's book started when the Smoking Gun Web site said it could find no public records supporting the author's claim he had spent three months in jail after trying to run over a police officer with his car.
Frey's biggest supporter, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, who had chosen it for her book club, said she still supported him, although she said she wished his publishers were more forthcoming.
"Although some of the facts have been questioned, the underlying message of redemption still resonates for me," she said in a call to King at the end of Frey's interview with him.
Publishers Weekly columnist Sara Nelson said: "Like many memoirists before him, who, after all, practice what is known in writing programs as creative nonfiction, Frey produced a compelling portrait of an addict's life complete with all its deceptions and grandiosity and he gave the readers what they want.
"He changed some names to protect the innocent, and some details to protect, and, it must be said, aggrandize himself. But he didn't write front-page newspaper profiles of people he'd never talked to and he never claimed that 'Pieces' was supposed to be 'All the President's Men.'
The UK press, however, openly injects more "'I know it all' drivel" opinion into its reporting.
