James Frey: The Truth Set Me Free
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
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One of the central themes of A Million Little Pieces is the importance of authenticity and being truthful. That parts of the book are fiction when it was sold as a memoir to me undermines that message hugely. The truth does matter and to claim otherwise is postmodern nonsense.
If you think all those other famous authors don't lie to us, you must be high.
Exactly!
but they put effort into hiding it - that should count for something lol
That's fiction
@royfr8136 wow, I can't believe I wrote that. Now that I'm more of a scientist, I don't even know what I was thinking. But to say that truth is subjective is a massive red flag. Anyway, I'm gonna delete my old comment after you have a minute to see this one.
I remember reading the book before the controversy and remember thinking "this is too Hollywood, seems like bull shit".
He took every beaten to death addiction story trope and turned it up to the max to make a total pile of shittily written drivel.
@@joelbennett9014 Yeah, lol. I remember it was the tragic abused addict girl in rehab, who reminded me of a love interest in a bad 90's junkie drama, that sealed the deal for me.
@@nookie077 The character I found most hilarious was the mafioso boss named Leonard...it was like a pastiche of Scorcese characters. He didn't even try to give the guy any human elements, he was just a cardboard cutout of every mob guy ever who apparently took a shine to this young, doofy twerp named James Frey who contributed absolutely nothing to the world and went around vomiting up blood everywhere (at least in the mornings by his own account, there were probably even some bones in there too).
Then he has the gall to write an entire second book about this fake character of his that never had any depth to begin with. I get angry just thinking about how dumb this guy is..
To save others 3 minutes they can't get back, I'll paraphrase:
"The Hallmark bullshit in my book wasn't "true"? Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man. I made a fuck-ton of change off that puke, so now I can be like 'fuck you,' you know? Being thoughtful is, like, a prison; that's not my style. If you read my shit and wanna, like, think about it, I guess that's your truth or whatever, but I'm just doin' me with MY swag, you know? I'm not gonna lie: shit is pretty dope".
Dead 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
LOL 😂😂
Exactly.
"I got kicked out of a club I never wanted to be a part of".... I love this! Reminds me of Oscar Wilde " Never want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member" 🖤
It's easy to say you don't want to be part of the club after you've already become a millionaire because of said club. I got mine now fuck off! Hahaha!
He plagiarised it from the OW quote.
Groucho Marx dummy
Only a liar would say the truth is subjective
THAT'S SOME HOT ASS TEA
Tell me what psychopathy looks like!
This is what psychopathy looks like!
That's not really true.
@UC7qimb08gwRsi8nD-d62nFQ it absolutely is true. PERCEPTION is different than truth. For instance if you were asked “Did you get arrested and go to jail 5 different times?”, there’s only one answer to that!! And if you answer yes when you really went once, you’re a fucking liar through and through 🤷🏻♀️
@@WSGtr12 the above was a response to you, not sure why it added all those other numbers and letters
Dang if he just deleted the first three letters of his book’s category to be fiction rather than non-fiction he’d be touted as having one of the most successful books ever.
Well, it wouldn't be successful at all if that was the case. If shown as a work of fiction it would just be mediocre at best. The whole reason it blew up (specially through Oprah) was because people though it was real. Oprah said she kept looking at the back of the book just to reality check that the writer was still alive and well despite it all. That's what got her and other people emotional.
I doubt that. It probably wouldn't of even been published. The reason it was picked up by Oprah was because she believed it was a true story - which is understandable. People are much more interested in a story that they believe to be true. Hence, why they never forget to label every movie "bases on a true story" if they can get away with it in Hollywood.
To write pure succsesfull fiction you really need to be a great writer with an amazing idea, or have an established name. This would of been just another generic junkie tale in the fiction bargain bin. And that's why the guy lied. He knew it could help sell his book, but I think it worked too well and the Oprah exposure brought too much attention.
“I don’t think truth and fact are the same thing.” Ok, sociopath. Whatever you say.
Such bullshit. When you read a memoir, the expectation is that you are being presented with truthful information. There’s even room for artistic embellishment, but what Frey did was outright lie. He presented readers with events and relationships that weren’t as presented and then has the gall to give us this “artistic” excuse. If I want fiction, I’ll read a novel.
It's not about the content of the book actually. It's about how it was labeled. Fiction, memoir? What. You must have labeled it novel. That's it. Because it's a good book. But the fact that you let the publisher put "memoir" label on it, you claim and market it as a nonfiction.
But he acted like this was his story and it’s not. He’s a liar and when it came out he tried to lie and cover that it was his story blah blah blah but then people literally proved he was a liar and now he’s changing his tune lol
And he looks like a fool :)
He sounds a bit self-absorbed...
In my opinion he’s a complete ass-wipe lmao…but that’s not to say his writing isn’t great.
@@karalantz6520 - You're probably right. When I saw your comment to my comment, I had to Google this guy. I have had too much tragedy in my life over these past 2 years to remember what this was all about. I didn't even realize he died. 🙄
Except he went and promoted it as a memoir. It wasn't even a very good book. I was a junky when I read it. Read a good portion of it in a detox center. I was a tried and true dope fiend, and it was obvious to me right away that this was fiction. It was so self congratulatory and egotistical I couldn't stomach, even his fictional character. If you don't want to be called out then call it a novel. The Novels written by Burroughs and Kerouac where more factual than James Frey's memoir.
Thank you same here ex junky i actually underlined everything that sounded like lies which was more than half the lame ass book
Your comment is perfect lol! The thing is, the book was brought to publishers AS a fictional novel, but nobody wanted to fuck with it until he re-classified it as a memoir so it was more ‘harrowing and bravely touching” lol 😒 the guy is a complete asswipe tbh and you’re right about everything you said!
I thought it was good, even if it was completely outlandish. I mean, the dentist scene?? Come on. Wish fulfillment in a book basically
Oh for God's sake! I was an active addict for years. He threw so much BS into the book.
i Would rather Watch Naruto in reverse than Read Your "Total Shit" - J Baldwin
Post 2010 where no one takes responsibility for anything and the phrase 'my truth' appeared. He got caught lying and all he can say is 'its great'
Whatever you want to tell yourself James.
He could have at any point during the release of the book mentioned his memoir was part fictional. At the very least advise the parents of those dead girls that he was going to use their death story as apart of his fame building.
People acting like memoirs with fictional elements are something he invented lol
"Born to work in that system" this dude's resentment is PALPABLE
The first seven seconds tells you all you need to know about him. Habitual liar with no respect for others. There seems to be some sophists in the comment section. Maybe they can hook up with this guy and collaborate.
Lying is never good.
I tried to read his book, and it was just… so hard. He seemed like such a dick the whole time. The way he treated his mom was insane. I couldn’t finish it and now I’m kinda glad I didn’t. His lack of want for rules is looking more and more like a lack of morals, too
I just finished it and it was so stupid.
I remember an interview with Maya Angelou (with Don Swaim) where she was asked if her memoirs were completely truthful. She laughed and said that they're 'emotionally truthful', even if the facts are not 100% accurate, she was truthful about how she felt, what she thought, how it changed her. If I wrote a completely accurate memoir about my life, it would include 500 pages of me playing videogames and eating cereal. You can understand why writers have to take artistic liberty with narratives to make the book interesting. Despite all the negative press he got, from smut-peddling, sensationalist twats like Oprah, A Million Little Pieces was an absolutely amazing fucking book.
there’s artistic license on your interpretation of an event that happened to you and then there’s saying you were part of an accident that killed two real people that you weren’t actually a part of.
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
If you wrote a memoir, then true, it might include all those video games and breakfasts IF you could make them meaningful or entertaining. Or you might leave all that stuff out in favor of writing about a relationship or your travels. But if you invent characters and experiences, then you could market the book as fiction or, in your writing group, tell the other members that it's fiction.
At least Maya Angelou had the integrity to answer the interviewer’s question honestly. Frey deserved all the shit talking and bad press he got. And even here in this interview years down the road from the controversy, he’s not even willing to simply acknowledge that he FUUUCKED up, and that’s why people are angry, not because he wrote a bad book 🤷🏻♀️
I shall be writing a memoir. A massive chunk of it will be about my non-stop playing of video games. Telling about all the world records I achieved in countless video games. My story is so unique because it all sounds like a bunch of lies and far-fetched claims from me, when it's not. Revolves around an event that's never happened to anybody on the Earth before and won't ever happen on the Earth again. Should be a bestseller then really. I will be pissed off if it's not. It deserves to be.
“Your are brilliant” lol
With grammar like that I can’t imagine you’ve read too many books
You are the problem with this society.
Calling a liar brilliant shows how weak your mind really is.
Take care.
so if his intent was not to write the book as a memoir, how does it get across to the publisher that it's a memoir? nut job.
I've never read a million little pieces but I've heard its great. When i read the sun also rises i never thought to ask myself if this is fact or fiction. Its a shitty thing to lie but it doesn't really change the words on the page.
It literally does ...
You are just choosing to get off on the lie cause of your feelings ? Seriously ?
@@itsok6640 Beatrice sparks did the same thing. Yet Go Ask Alice was a mandatory read. Oprah even called to apologize to this guy. Lighten up
@@therealrosieodonnell1619 two wrongs don't make a right !? Somebody else ran an old lady over with a car in my town does that mean it's fine if I do it!?
@@itsok6640 Interesting. Please, continue
@@therealrosieodonnell1619 she only apologised for voicing her words too aggressively
I think your an author who was never a real drug addict
fact is you LIED, period
This Guy is a Genius!!!
Who cares if the stories he told about himself were not true? He created something from his imagination that entertained a lot of people, I guess.
The world is full of lies and disinformation already. Leave the guy alone and focus on how you can also make greatness happen for yourself...In fact, I think haters should continue to talk about him. It's good publicity. Now I know about the book and I'm gonna read it.
People "casting" stones on him as if they have never deliberately done any wrong for their own personal gain.
If you sell your story as a memoir, it damn well better be truthful as can be.
You can’t embellish and make up stuff or else it all becomes fiction
I hate people like this. You'll always hear people say that the day they thought their life was over was the day it really began. The truth is that most people fuck up and just happen to continue on a path towards success. But they'll never know because they screwed their big opportunity over. This guy could of being doing multimillion dollar book deals but is instead publishing books out of his garage. The fact is that this guy lied his ass off and will never admit it.
He has zero integrity. I don’t even think he was an addict. I think he’s just a liar and said he’s an addict to cover up the fact that he’s just a plain ole bad person
Lmfao he also said it was the same ‘demons’ that lead him to drink&drug that forced him to ‘embellish’ (aka completely bullshit your way through) the novel. Naaaah you wanted to get a book deal and that’s what made you re-classify as a memoir knowing that you’re a liar and a cheat.
fraud got caught
truth: the quality or state of being true. This guy maybe a great writer, is there something wrong with him calling his book fiction if it's not a factual book or non-fiction is it's based on facts? You don't have to recreate definitions to fit what you say. Why does he have to make such a philosophical statement about what the Truth is?
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. Proverbs 14:12
Because...he is a liar.
james frey is an incredible writer. love his style
"I don't think truth and fact are the same thing."
He's a shitty writer, and even worse at lying. I had the displeasure of reading 'a Million Little Pieces' recently. It's hard to determine which area he sucks the most at.
Your are brilliant!! I love your books 📚
He's a fucking liar wtf ?
He's a liar.
he threw the publisher under the bus...
Kenny Lee Jian Siong the publisher knew damn well parts of it were altered to affect and help readers the way it did. These publishers tried to dissociate themselves from him because of their “dignity” yet they kept taking the money his book was providing them
Who really gives a fuck if what happened in AMLP was true or not?
Hell, I just finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha not too long ago, and (spoilers) the last pages reveal it ISN'T actually memoirs. I had a "Oh, really? It's not real?" moment after realizing that, but the fact was that the story was good and that's all I actually read that book for: a good story.
A Million Little Pieces, from what I've read so far, is pretty good. The run-on sentence style of writing he has is interesting to say the least, but the _story_ is good.
Post-modernism in a nutshell. Congratulations everybody, here we are.
Hearing him talk in the first 30 secs i was like yeah guys q clown and anyone that has been through a that stuff should know ge was full of it and sadly people who have not its a bad introduction to this subject onlt thing that qas true was his ignorant narcissist behavior and mentality he would have got more respect being real from the jump cause any addict not aware of getting help could see ignorant books like this and act like him and end up worse xause i have seen it sadly ego and addiction arennot friends sadly mommy and daddy didn't hug him enough
Love your style of work
En lo personal yo te apoyo, eres un gringo bueno, no ningun libro honesto, y no todos somos honestos, el tema es salir de las drogas y del alcohol, bill y bob tambien son gringos que yo considero santos, y no eran santos pero ayudaron a millones y a mi
If you think everything you read is supposed to be true, then you are a fool. Even history books are not factual. We only get the perspective of the writer not necessarily facts, more like interpretations. Anyway, this guy makes a good point, truth is a very subjective thing. Even if millions of people agree about something, it doesn't mean that it follows that it is true. Language has its limits.
This isn't about people thinking EVERYTHING in a book is true, this guy said the events that happened in the book actually happened in real life, which is a lie. Language does indeed have its limits but being able to say whether something did or did not happen is pretty easy to convey.
sp33kz He says that the publishing company decided to publish it as a memoir- he never said that. And maybe he means that these events happened but maybe not to him, I don;t think it is that relevant in the context he was writing the book. It's not like they were going to teach that in schools. Even the people who read and had substance abuse problems didn't really care in general. He helped many people with similar struggle and that is what we should look at.
zabelicious. Dude history books are not from perspectives of the author. There are a lot of factual pieces in existence bro
zabelicious not true whoever told u this is a lie dude
@@emptRxThe history that is published in books, isn't always as factual as we have all been lead to believe.
the fact is he told a bald faced lie. Now he is justifying it by blaming others.
Why does it matter if all the stuff in his book happened to him? Truth is truth. Like when Anne Dillard wrote about the water bug and the frog. She didn't see those events. Nevertheless those things happen every day. So they are truths. George Orwell's book 1984 may not be nonfiction, but that doesn't make it "untrue." Similarly, if Fray wrote something people could connect with, than it must have been true, on some level. I think that is what he is saying.
WhoAmI The big difference of course being that George Orwell didn't publish 1984 as a work of nonfiction.
I don't like him needing to justify himself so much about the Truth in his book. I loved it. At first I was a little disappointed, but also I know that reality doesn't always work perfectly in art so you have to "embellish" it a little bit. Come on...all this chaos is just a symptom of the so called "respectability" or "hypocrisy" (sorry for my English...).
He went a little far though, such as claiming he spent days in prison when in reality he was only in for a day.
The infamous dental scene without anesthetic was also found to be exaggerated
Is there any truth in the book at all?
Nobody gives a shit. The feeling it invoked was real and that's the only truth that matters.
Yes, I knew him in High School in St. Joe Michigan, and some of things he wrote I know happened to him, and some happened to others but he added himself to the story. I think some of the others were stories shared in group/AA meetings and he attributed them to himself. He was an unknown writer at the time I think just trying to tell a first-person story with impact, not share a memoir.
Yeah I heard that it was actually the publishing company that pushed to label the book a memoir.
@@vegexperiment8013 You don’t sell a book as truth when it’s not.
That’s fraud
You tricked me. I was so crestfallen when I realized that your story wasn't true.
his lie was not that serious 🙄 Oprah went in on him because of her own ego. She was upset she got duped. The statement he made, in general about truth is correct. Not everyone will have the same truth. You can take two ppl and put them in a situation and they will come away with two diff stories. It's about perception and experience. Then there is fact. Totally diff.
I read the book and remember the uproar Oprah caused. I don't think James Frey did anything wrong, he was piecing together stories of times he was inebriated. No malicious intent.
He purposely altered facts while selling it as a memoir. Which is not okay.
For example, he said in the book he spent several weeks in prison when in reality he was only in for a day.
The infamous dentist scene without anesthesia was proven false too.
excuses
I don't really care that he wrote a book and got out of the system, what I care about is that he lied.
Nobody gives a shit. The feeling it invoked was real and that's the only truth that matters.
@@vegexperiment8013Frauds don’t deserve appreciation
My favorite book ever - love it
But what did he lie about????
Charlie Browm Yes, there's doesn't seem to be any interview where he's upfront about the events that actually did happen & those that are fictitious. ....
Lady London read the smoking gun article that came or called a million little lies. It's a long article and details every fabrication they have found
Charlie Browm read the smoking gun article called a million little lies. Its pretty detailed
i like his attitude
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Makes me wonder if that book “Boy called It” was fabricated too. So did this guy completely lie about the things in the book or just added more juicy stuff to over exaggerate his memoir?
He was unfortunately telling the truth…why would you even think that?
@@MsTinkerbelle87 It was proven that Frey embellished details
he should change his name by deed-poll too PATHOLOGICAL LIAR.......... - and then all would be forgiven in an instant.
in an instant james. in an instant.
The only author who actually told the truth
If only he did it in the book itself and not publish it as a memoir