LGBT Book, Film & Video Blog

Fact or fiction? In a memoir, it's hard to say

The Register-Guard 

If Oprah Winfrey is still his friend, does it really matter if James Frey made up part of his mega-selling memoir about his drug addiction and eventual recovery?

Maybe not. But the publishing world might want to pay attention to the rest of what was said by the woman who can make a best-seller overnight.

During Frey's appearance Wednesday on CNN's ''Larry King Live,'' Winfrey called in to say she still supports the author because, ''The underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir resonates with me.''

But in response to the point that Frey's story might better have been published as fiction, she did not disagree. ''I am disappointed by the controversy surrounding `A Million Little Pieces,' '' she said, ''because I rely on the publishers to define the category that a book falls within.''

In fact, Frey originally shopped his manuscript around as a novel. But when the book was first published in 2003 by Doubleday, it came out as a memoir. It soared to the top of the best-seller lists last fall after Winfrey chose it for her TV show's book club. Her endorsement helped the book become the second-best-selling title of 2005, behind ''Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.''

The controversy erupted a week ago, when the Web site the Smoking Gun (www.thesmokinggun.com) posted an article alleging that court records, police reports and interviews showed that ''many key sections'' of the book did not check out.

The article alleged that Frey greatly exaggerated his criminal record, as if the author were making himself out to be more of bad character than he really was.

For instance, Frey wrote that he spent three months in jail after assaulting police officers. The Smoking Gun investigation found he spent no significant time in jail and, during the event in question, was arrested without incident for driving drunk.

On ''Larry King Live,'' Frey acknowledged that, ''I changed things.'' He pointed out that the details being challenged totaled less than 5 percent of the book's content. And he offered a defense similar to that of his publisher: Memoirs should not be held to the standards of other nonfiction books. ''Everyone's memory is subjective,'' he told King.

The ''essential truth'' of his memoir remains, he said. ''I couldn't have written it if I hadn't been through a lot of the things I talk about. It's a memoir. It's an imperfect animal. ... I don't think it should be held up and scrutinized the way a perfect nonfiction document should be, or a newspaper article.''

That's a longstanding debate in the publishing business, one embodied in the positions of author Gay Talese and publisher Nan A. Talese. The two are husband and wife.

Gay Talese, a renowned author of nonfiction and a former reporter for The New York Times, said Wednesday that he believed it was unacceptable for an author or a publisher to present as nonfiction a work that contained composite or fictional characters or made-up events.

''Nonfiction takes no liberty with the facts,'' Gay Talese said. ''The trouble with book publishers is that they don't have the staff or they don't want to have the staff to ensure the veracity of a writer. ... My wife is going to hate me for this, but that is what I believe.''

His wife, whose Nan A. Talese imprint at Doubleday published Frey's book, disagreed, saying that memoir cannot be held to the same standard as history or biography.

''Memoir is personal recollection,'' she said. ''It is not absolute fact. It's how one remembers what happened. ... I adore Gay, but this is a debate that we've been having for 40 years.''