Week Seven Prompt

I remember the scandal of A Million Little Pieces by James Frey when it was happening. My sister adored the book and the subsequent novels by Frey. She not only read them, but talked to me about them extensively until finally I gave in and agreed to read them also. I was not a particular follower of Oprah's Book Club, but I had read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an Oprah Book Club pick, and fallen in love with it. So when I saw that A Million Little Pieces was also an Oprah Book Club pick I was hopeful. My sister read the memoir before it was revealed to be largely false. When I saw the Oprah special where she confronts James Frey on the memoir and the lies within, I excitedly approached my sister asking how she felt, and expecting her to be heartbroken. However, her mood and opinion on the book were mostly unchanged. She still claimed to love the book just as much. I did not read the book until after the controversy had happened and my opinion on the book was rather neutral and unimpressed. I do wonder if my opinion would have been different if I had read it believing it was wholly true like my sister did.

The "A Million Little Lies" article that is exposing the false components of the book for one of the first times is very interesting to read. Re-reading the excerpts of the book next to the actual facts is almost painful for the ways in which Frey seems to want so badly to be a victim, dangerous, tough, and wild. I have noticed that many people who are not devoted readers still often like memoirs, such as what A Million Little Pieces was trying to be, that reveal gritty and dangerous lifestyles. I like that these books draw in reluctant readers and a part of me almost wonders "What's the harm in exaggerating the facts in these books?" but in a time like now where false information and determining truth in the "facts" you read is so important, falsified memoirs could actually be very dangerous and contributing to the sensation of "false news".