James Frey received critical acclaim—a National Bestseller-- for his book, A Million Little Pieces, a perfect title for a book which would effectively make his life fall into such. I rarely re-read books which don’t steal me by surprise but I found it on my bookshelf, sitting beside books I appreciate to a much higher degree, grabbed it and opened it to the first page:

“I wake to the drone of an airplane engine and the feeling of something warm dripping down my chin. I lift my hand to feel my face. My front four teeth are gone. I have a hole in my cheek, my nose is broken and my eyelids are swollen nearly shut.”

Frey recognizes, through those swollen eyelids and with a hole in his cheek, that he is on a plane. Red flag. What sort of man ends up on a plane, without a chaperone, with a goddamn hole in his cheek? Surely Oprah might have questioned this. But a memoir is a memoir and a memoir isn’t always factual. (Please note: The Third Sunrise, fortunately or fortunately, is) The bible, I’m holding my breath here, is also not factual. Frey scared all future memoirists with his tryst down memory---lack thereof----lane.

Search: A Million Little Pieces on Google. The first two pages: Wikipedia and, what a surprise, Oprah come up. Oprah seems to find her way into every controversy.

Wikipedia states:

“A Million Little Pieces is a semi-fictional memoir by James Frey”

Oprah’s website has Frey sitting on her plush couch trying to explain how addiction erodes memoir etc etc while Oprah has her leg crossed, she stares at Frey, and her eyes could kill. See picture below. Nothing is worse for your career then pissing off Oprah. Ask James.

Oprah states (and I am stifling a laugh over here because the Guy in The Other Room is still sleeping):

“James Frey is here and I have to say it is difficult for me to talk to you because I feel really duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers. I think it's such a gift to have millions of people to read your work and that bothers me greatly. So now, as I sit here today I don't know what is true and I don't know what isn't. So first of all, I wanted to start with The Smoking Gun report titled, "The Man Who Conned Oprah" and I want to know—were they right?”

James responds, deadpan:

“I think most of what they wrote was pretty accurate. Absolutely”

What a brilliant response, truly. Bravo James.

She goes on and interrogates him like he has just killed someone. I must ask: why did she not notice that he had no visible scarring on his face? Would a hole in your face not leave a scar? Maybe addicts have great dental care in America.

Why am I bothering to re-hash this? Simply because in the first few pages of the newest edition of A Million Little Pieces, Frey explains that certain things were embellished for the benefit and readability of the book.

His (past) publisher Doubleday states:

“We bear responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding A Million Little Pieces”

So, here’s what we have:

-A seething Oprah angry because she has been made to look a little gullible. Oprah, understandably, does not want to be seen as anything but absolutely correct. She is a monarchy in her own right.

-James Frey, maybe a little embarrassed, but if any publicity is good publicity he couldn’t have planned this any better. The book goes on to sell another million copies and as such, his life remains in piece.

-As for Doubleday, well, they went ahead and took James of the list of clientele. He finds another publisher and off he goes, broken nose and all.

Case in point: a man with a bleeding hole in his cheek would probably not be on an airplane.

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Oprahs-Questions-for-James

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Sincerely,

Natalie