Truth and Consequences? The latest in literary scandal and the search for Truth.

Over dinner the other night, conversation dwelled on the difference between hoaxes and frauds, be they literary, scientific, or journalistic. We talked about the most recent, that of A Million Little Pieces, the best-selling book by James Frey that Oprah Winfrey inaugurated with her book club this past October.  Supposedly a true story about Frey’s recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, allegations now circulate that Frey invented many of his narrative punches.

Among the accusers, the widely-visited The Smoking Gun website here has announced that weeks of investigation into court records, police reports and other documents has turned up many falsehoods in Frey’s phenomenal account. Frey denounces his critics as “the latest attempt to discredit me” at his website here. 

My interest in the scandal was not the same as my dinner companions, who considered it unethical on the part of the publishing house to have published a book that is claimed as true when in fact it wasn’t. Their argument, to which I am partly sympathetic, is that a story of addiction and recovery is read by people who care that there is truth to the possibility of recovery (and indeed rich monetary desserts) after such long personal and physical struggle. In such cases (as distinguished from stories, say, only about love or adventure?), the book publisher and the author have special responsibilities.

I was interested in this hoax (fraud?) because it illuminated the still-vibrant stake in being able to tell the difference between truth and fiction, reality and imagination.  But in the realm of literature and literary studies (and film, of course), it is commonplace to glean lessons of life from stories that are obviously made up.  Do we care that Crime and Punishment is a work of fiction when we teach it in classes on philosophy, justice or ethics? Are the lessons of To Kill a Mockingbird diluted because Harper Lee invented Atticus Finch? Do those lessons change significantly were a teacher to announce that Harper Lee may have based some of the characters and plot of her novel on people from her Alabama home town? I have heard rumors to that effect, but I have a hard time believing that were they true, the legacy of To Kill a Mockingbird would change all that drastically.

So why do people care so much that James Frey may have made up some parts of his book?  Think back to earlier “hoaxes”: Alan Sokal and the “Social Text” affair here; Sidd Finch, the rookie baseball player who, it was reported in a 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated, could throw a fast ball at 168 miles per hour, here; Stephen Glass, who fabricated sources and some articles while writing for the New Republic; A3G and her "self-outing" as a "he" discussed here on the blogosphere! As lawyers, we can distinguish the hoax with a moral (Sokal) from the April Fool’s joke (Finch). And we can say, likely with ease, that Glass as a journalist had an ethical obligation to other journalists and to his readers to report facts.  But what of the moral outrage the followed A3G's revelation?  Was it simple play, a sophisticated hoax, or does the misrepresentation border on breach? Fraud? If so, how does Frey “making it up," for example, differ from those literary autobiographers such as Gertrude Stein, Mary McCarthy, Sherwood Anderson and Roland Barthes, who also “took liberties” when telling their lives?  Where does Frey’s obligation as a writer come from? Does it come from the genre category on the book jacket that says “nonfiction”? (If so, watch new categories spring up, say, one called “autobiographical fiction.”)  Perhaps he breached his obligation based on his statement to his readers that the story he tells is true, a kind of oral promise? If so, these other more famous writers, with arguably much larger followings, were that much more in the wrong.  And certainly, there is no detrimental reliance or materiality for a legal claim here. 

But it is not a lawsuit Frey’s readers seek. Readers are disappointed because the special amazement that “reality” engenders has been lost. Reading A Million Little Pieces, you just can’t believe Frey endured the trauma he did. Reading it, and believing it, is much of the fun, the attraction.  This is the same lure, I gather, of reality television. You watch it not because it is interesting in and of itself (who cares, really, what the renovated house will look like, if the nanny will get the kids to behave, who will lose the most weight?).  We watch because it is actually happening.  It is the voyeurism that attracts.  But what do we learn? What do we know? I am pushed to ask: so what if it’s real? Crime and Punishment endures as a model lesson about individual responsibility and criminal justice, about the relation between retribution and forgiveness.  And it is good entertainment too. Perhaps the answer is that Frey is no Dostoevsky, and that is enough.

Comments

[Susan Silbey]

It matters whether Frey's account was truth or fiction because in believing it was true, readers were misled about the way the world works, let us say the way reality is constructed. The readers seeking a true account desire not only a moral accounting - a lesson about good and evil and the possibilities of redemption, they are also looking for evidence that overcoming evil and doing good is probable, not merely possible. The observer who seeks reality in the text is often seeking instruction on "how to" as much as "why" and "what for."

[Dave]

"It matters whether Frey's account was truth or fiction because in believing it was true, readers were misled about the way the world works, let us say the way reality is constructed."

I think this accurately captures the reason for most readers' outrage at the Frey affair, but it doesn't ring true for me. Why is a denotatively true story necessarily more effective at edifying readers than one that's fictional (or, one might say, that possesses a different, literary sort of truth)?

If Frey's account misdescribes the world and that misleads his readership, there's a problem. But for the most part, his fictionalized incidents appear to have been true to life, and if readers relate to those stories and are made better off for it, I'm hard-pressed to see the harm. To take another example, the 60s drug-scare memoir "Go Ask Alice" was eventually shown to be not strictly accurate, but more a composite of various young women's stories. Does that mean it shouldn't be assigned to keep kids off drugs (assuming it was effective at achieving that end)? I'm not sure.

In the end, I think the later post on this site got it right--people just don't like to feel duped. Someone who reads and relates to a memoir comes to trust the author in a personal way (despite not knowing him), and the revelation that the author's account is fictionalized is not dissimilar to being betrayed by a friend.

[Heather]

Dave seems to have hit the nail on the head as far as feelings on the issue - who likes to find out they have been taken in by an illusion? I also agree with his assessment of the lack of problem that the fictionalization represents - after all, this is really a marketing problem. If the book had been written by "anonymous" perhaps readers would have better tolerated some latitude in the "facts"? I haven't read it so am not qualified to speculate further.
Jessica, I'm an old NNHS'er from your class of '88. Drop a line if you get a chance (and if you can see the e-mail address) or on my blog, in return. Your essays are much better thought out than mine, by the way. Bravo.

[Jessica Silbey]

I agree with both Dave and Heather (and Jennifer in her later post) that the dominant feeling is one of being duped, and this explains much of the hub-hub. I wonder, however, about Dave's further comment which is that the reason we feel that way is because we feel as if we have been betrayed by a friend. Where does that close, emotional feeling we get from reading a memoir -- which is different from the close, emotional feeling we get from reading a fictionalized novel -- come from? Does it come from the implicit promise that the writer is exposing the truth of himself and we should be honored to be let in, as a friend is let in on a secret? And why should that be the case when he is letting in the whole world on his private life? No honor without selectivity, right? Do we feel similarly "honored" when we watch a reality television show? Or a television tell-all interview with a well-known politician or movie actor? Feeling duped may be the operative emotion, but I wonder if we feel duped for the wrong reasons. Or if we are wrong to feel duped. Jim Frey isn't our friend and he doesn't necessarily aim to be. So if he is creating trust, it is coming from somewhere else. I wonder, is this a question of rhetoric rather than categories?

[Eh Nonymous]

The wikipedia link is malformed; an extra ); were tacked on to the URL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidd_Finch);

should be

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidd_Finch

[PhydayRar]

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