08 February 2006

Freyed not

Meghan O'Rourke's column in Slate today is an excellent discussion of what publishers should do given "readers' willingness to turn a half-blind eye if they feel that the fabrications smack of emotional truth" in works like A Million Little Pieces and James Frey's new book My Friend Leonard.

She suggests that the disclaimers in memoirs are perhaps insufficient, and that given the "flights of fancy" masquerading as memories of events, we need to rethink the categorization of the type of stories that are coming to rule the market:

Part of the predicament editors face, of course, is the continuing appetite for this type of overblown story. Sales for Frey's books may have dropped since the Smoking Gun allegations were made public, but it's not as though the marketplace has turned its back on Frey. Lerner's book is apparently being made into a Hollywood movie starring Liam Neeson. No one's fooled that all the confessional lore that claims big audiences and spots on Oprah is exactly true. But because of labels like "memoir" and "nonfiction," we have to pretend the spectacle is based in reality. So, perhaps instead of rigorous policing, we need a new name for this hybrid category. We're talking about stories inspired by gritty real life—stories that claim to be outrageously "authentic," like the best reality TV, while also playing up their own tabloid qualities. Maybe Doubleday didn't need an author's note; it needed Barnes & Noble to set up a new section in the bookstore. Coming soon to an outlet near you: "Reality fiction."
Not a bad idea, really. I mean, I don't buy the "if you can imagine it, it's real," argument. And it's certainly not because I only respect journalists. I'm just worried that eventually people will distrust both journalists (as they do because of Judy Miller and Jayson Blair) and writers of literary nonfiction. That eventually people will stop taking for granted that you lived it, saw it, and reported/wrote it. They'll expect that the writer is out for personal profit or fame, or that they're lazy or disturbed and untrustworthy. And that sucks. It ruins the whole agreement between writer and reader, whether it's a newspaper or a memoir.

2 comments:

Cupcake said...

The problem is, people are so bored with their own lives they keep clamouring for more and more outrageous entertainment, which leads to over-production. Take reality television: pioneers like Real World and Survivor. Okay, that was some pretty dumb yet oddly compelling drama. The problem was, entertainment programmers humped the thing to death until we started becoming desensitized to the drama.

Soon, it wasn't enough to put a bunch of slutty strangers on an island/loft/boardroom- the producers of such shows began throwing the characters into strangely contrived situations and not-so-subtly manipulating the plot for maximum scandal. They even began hiring writers for something that was supposedly unscripted.

And so we got Frey, who probably had a perfectly compelling, interesting story but either someone else or Frey himself convinced him that it needed to be bigger, badder, tougher, sexier etc.. because that is how the mass market likes its "infotainment". If you don't give a damn about the mainstream audience, then you can walk away but with more and more producers (ie. publishers) exclusively concerned about the bottom line you might find yourself facing the choice between watering down (or 'roiding up) your work for mass appeal or never letting it see the light of day. It's a choice I hope I never have to make.

That being said, perhaps I am unfamiliar with how much of Frey's story was actually fabricated. I think I need to read the entire Smoking Gun report.

Sheena said...

The TSG report is interesting. His time in prison was fabricated and questions have arisen regarding the root canal and the "waking up on a plane" episode. Also, the Freakonomics guys did a little digging into the suicide of Lilly and determined that it never happened.

The whole sordid affair is fascinating. Though the drama that's erupted is the same as if people discovered that The Bachelor was really contrived and those people didn't fall in love after all.