Just finished "A Million Little Pieces", by James Frey

[bluescribbler]

Yeah, I know it's a fake memoir, but I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. Turns out it's a pretty good read. In fact, I thought it was great writing.

Question is, why did he feel that he had to pretend that it was autobiographical. It seems obvious to me that he had to have done a lot of research into addiction and rehabilitation to achieve the degree of verisimilitude he did. Couldn't he have just called it a novel and be done with it? Or wouldn't it have sold as many copies? Or perhaps not been published at all? :shrug:

[pitohui]

1. you can't get a novel read if you are an unknown

it's a simple as that, it's systemic, and this is why so many fake memoirs are coming to light since the mid 1990s or so

publishers will no longer read fiction from an unknown, even AGENTS won't read fiction from an unknown, so you have to be related to someone or sleeping with someone or successful in a well known writing workshop/MBA program

a far cry from the day when anyone could be a writer if they could write something good, it could be discovered in the so-called "slush" pile

today, "slush" (work by an unknown) is not read for legal reasons

you have to have a gimmick, and the "but it really happened" gimmick is the oldest one going

frey didn't create the world as it is, he merely did what he had to do to put food on his table in the world as it is

if frey had been honest that the work was fiction, it would never have been read by any agent or publisher or editor, so it could not have been published


MOST memoirs out there are not true, i hope you know that, just as most "autobiographies" are written by ghosts

i actually ghost wrote a nonfiction book from an expert who i was never able to get on the phone and speak to even ONCE, he had disappeared...but my publisher still needed the book to be produced so there it is, my research was apparently good enough that i was never called on it, and to my knowledge the man has never resurfaced (which i assume means that he must have passed away)

[ptolomeus]

2. Yeah, I saw it in Oprah

The author portrayed it as a real story while it was really fiction.