EVENT
Jessica told me about the sensation surrounding the James Frey book, A Million Little Pieces, last Sunday. Sometimes it seems like my head’s in the sand over pop-culture events such as this, but I was glad that she apprised me, because it came up time and time again at New School the following week.
Essentially, James Frey published his memoirs as an account of his drug and alcohol addictions and subsequent recovery. The story was incredibly successful and, following its selection by Oprah’s book club, sold millions of copies. Recently, however, an investigation by The Smoking Gun discovered that many of the details of the book are either dramatically elaborated or fabricated. Initially, Oprah defended the book and its selection, but she later reversed this stance, and took both Frey and his publisher, Doubleday, to task on her show.
I was afraid that this was going to be a long and complicated post, but the more I’ve read, the more that I think the fundamentals remain somewhat simple.
Firstoff, my “research” consists of two sources:
The Smoking Gun article.
Coverage on the Oprah Winfrey show.
I have two essential responses, the first being a qualification, the second an argument.
QUALIFICATION
There is much to deplore in Frey’s actions. His lies not only altered the structure, and thereby the message of his memoirs, but were hurtful in and of themselves. It’s easy for me to take this personally… police officers in a small Ohio town bore the brunt of some of his caricatures, and with my parents-in-law having worked for many years in law enforcement in a small Ohio town, it strikes a nerve with me. More appallingly, Frey’s account links him with a actual car-train accident, giving him an instrumental role in a situation with two real-life fatalities. His lies were hurtful and, given the success of his book, could be quite damaging to those they reflect upon. This is not only sloppy writing; it’s irresponsible writing. Anyone caricatured in Frey’s book has a legitimate cause for hating his guts, and a few might have a legitimate case for libel.
When the truth started to leak out, Frey also took legal action against the investigators checking out his story. Inasmuch as they were researching a text that purported to be the truth, this was an abuse of a legal system Frey now finds himself dependent upon. And this as well is a legitimate cause of censure.
And finally, on a personal level I don’t know that I’d like either Frey or his book. I haven’t had a particularly sunny history with frat-boy drug dealers, and I don’t like the style of his writing either. Just to let you know now which way my bias slants.
ARGUMENT
Now to the meat and potatoes question.
Do I as a writer have the right to compose a book composed largely, or Hell, completely of misleading information, and publish it as “nonfiction”?
Absolutely.
Why?
There is a practical argument and an ethical argument.
The PRACTICAL ARGUMENT is that authenticity in reportage has always been an issue and, in many ways, only grows more complex with time. In the developed world, and probably in America most of all, there is a wealth of information avaliable, all purporting to be credible, while there is little incentive for consumers to check the veracity of their sources. Moreover, anything is up for grabs so long as calculated risk determines that exaggeration/deceit is not likely to be caught. This is present in editorialism, in art criticism, and most significantly in the news. To use a tired but tragically relevant argument, how many of Frey’s readers, might we suppose, were as outraged about the corruption in Congress or the manipulation of intelligence that sent us into Iraq?
The PRACTICAL argument is this: That nonfiction and memoirs should not be universally vouchsafed at a certain level of truth because it establishes an expectation that is, in itself, incorrect. Not only is it impossible to universally vouchsafe something as amorphous, variegated, subjective, and problematic as autobiographical literature as the truth, but it implies that more straightforward “nonfiction,” such as news reporting is also vouchsafed.
The ETHICAL argument is this: that there is no hard line between fiction and nonfiction. There is no hard line between fact and opinion. We can sometimes approximate the region of fiction and nonfiction, and fact and opinion, (and this is going to be the source of any solution) but nevertheless, the way we collect and interpret data is inherently limited, flawed, and biased.
The argument could be safely made centuries ago that “memoirs,” “novels,” and so on could and should be universally grouped on the basis of these regions of truth… such categorization established an increasingly secular art and literature as distinct from traditionally “sponsoring” institutions. But even a quick glance at contemporary literary theory acknowledges the argument that language is unstable… that the possibilities of communication are always compromised. While I find that most contemporary writers working in mode are limited and damaged by a too-literal, or I should say, overzealous acceptance of this doctrine, it has been rigorously argued, and there’s a lot of truth to it.
Many of our political problems (and here is where I challenge anyone who argues that art is of little societal consequence) stem from the fact that institutions, whether a publishing house or an oil company, are aware of and take advantage of this instability to promote amibiguity that consistantly acts in their favor, while the public, as a whole, does not accept or acknowledge the existance of such ambiguities.
A prevalence of opinion and unexamined fact is dangerous when combined with an unskeptical public; an observation I certainly find to be borne out in America’s political situation today. Ultimately, individuals and the public at large need to take their “facts,” whatever the source, with more a grain of salt. Or, to apply this more gently, we need to learn trust, confidence, and candor in our personal relationships, but keep the views of our politicians, scientists, theologians, entertainers, and yes, writers, at more an arm’s length. We need to establish more rigorous standards of “veracity,” and our default ought to be skepticism.
The ETHICAL argument is that constraining nonfiction to a predetermined criteria of “truth,” and ultimately defining a text as “nonfiction” vs. “fiction,” is shackling both readers and writers to a category that is epistomologically bogus and necessarily arbitrary.
It is ironic, appropriate, and fundamentally unsurprising to me that James Frey has probably done more to promote the “postmodern argument” (because there is one, and it is this) than Don DeLillo, Susan Sontag, and Thomas Pynchon have accomplished through their long and illustrious careers.
END OF POST.