TVSquad

many interesting comments on this site. For more good conversation on this issue go to www.allreaders.net

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Thank you Oprah, and thank you James for a profound book. As the sister of an addict/alcoholic, your book is the only one I have ever read that accurately describes what addiction feels like. You have a talent for putting that into words on paper. Don't let the minority stop you from helping the majority. Keep your chin up, be proud and keep writing. I wish to sincerely thank you for your work.

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My God, he's gonna get away with it. He no doubt spent the day with the spinmeisters having "memoir is not autobiography" and "essential emotional truth" drilled into his head. They and the Big O watched Larry pitch his usual softballs, and when they were satisified they could weather the storm, Oprah made the phone call. The rubes will be eating it up, and Mr. Frey can make a few more millions with his pathetically poor writing.

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What a crock. Another liar profits in America.

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At the end of the day, this book is saving many people from a life that has no future.

Oprah had to continue to back him.

Even if it saves only one life the book and James Frye are living proof you do not have to be an addict for life.

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I hate to admit this, but I'm almost intrigued enough to read the book. Hmm. Maybe if the publisher reissues it as fiction...

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i think james frey's book is indefensible, whether it's true or not. we're talking about a spoiled rotten rich kid glamorizing himself for getting sent to a residential rehab facility on his corporate lawyer-dad's nickel. he's just a suburban poser pretending that he's bukowski or burroughs, and he's a really, really bad writer to boot. the fact that he is also a bullshit artist comes as no surprise.



as for oprah, i would rather that she stand by frey than that she get bitter and drop the book club like she did after j. franzen embarrassed her. frey's book is hardly the first piece of crap oprah has pushed on her adoring public (wally lamb? ugh!), but she's also promoted excellent work by writers who deserve the sales and the audience and who would almost certainly be utterly ignored and quickly remaindered along with the vast majority of quality contemporary novels without oprah's golden stamp of approval. anyone who can get millions of people otherwise disengaged from literature to pick up toni morrison, faulkner, ernest gaines, et. al. rather than the latest copy of US weekly can be forgiven for occasionally enabling a self-absorbed hack or two.

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Considering what a big controversy this book has been this past week. It might have been nice if Larry King read the book before interviewing James Frey. He should be ashamed of himself! It was very clear he had no idea what the book was about by the questions he asked James. I feel this book has done more to change peoples lives for the better. The people at smoking gun need to get a life!

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He should have been truthfull upfront. Any addict that may have been on the edge of rehabilitating themselves, may look at him as a liar and fall deeper into their addiction. He may cause more damage than any help he may have intended.

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Before saying this is a great book or say it's not the fact but the message that's important, please ask yourself what the message is:



* That 12 step methods, which have helped countless addicts to the point they've become the template for treating a wide range of compulsive addictions are all useless because they didn't work for Frey?



* That getting rich from your message of overcoming drug addiction does not mean you have to kick back a single cent to other treatment centers or rehabilitation programs? (Seriously, as well as his book sold it's a wonder we don't have a James Frey Clinic or two. Guess Frey was content to leave his junkie friends in the cold)



* That a rich boy who hits rock bottom should be loved and forgiven for overcoming his addiction despite (his claims of) assaulting a police officer, a priest, and countless addicts? Th



* That there is enough glamor to a life of crime cumulating in reaching rock bottom to be worthy of mass adoration?



* That it's OK to lie in what you call your memoir (which is meant to be a truthful genre, despite what Frey says), then lie again by saying it's 100 percent accurate, then say it's OK because all memoirs are fiction?



* That' it's acceptable to threaten to sue someone who reveals your lies, that it's not the lie that's wrong but being caught?



If you're fine with any or all of these, then please, defend Frey.

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This book does not help addicts. Period. It holds out false hope, that they can beat the odds by shunning any sort of recovery and do it on their own. As a long time recovering person myself, I fear that this tale will do more harm than good if people actually go around believing you can be as messed up as he claims to me, and then just use willpower to stay clean. It just doesn't happen like that.



Ironically, if he had been part of a 12 step program, he would probably have gained sufficient humility to see the folly of publishing even a true memoir. A total fabrication/embellishment would have been out of the question.



I just hope he comes clean - for his own sake and sanity.

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Oprah should go back to recommending books by dead authors, i's safer.

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The book starts off with the author unconscious and with traumatic facial injuries on a commercial airline. I couldn't get past the first chapter without thinking ... you've got to be kidding!!

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Oh come on, even if he did lie you know you enjoyed the book and yes everything in the book is unbeleivable that's what makes it so compelling. The public just doesn't like being dupped. The book is important b/c if your not an addict you don't know what it feels like to need and want something so bad. This book is the only book I have read that even comes close to capturing that feeling.

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this book is a strange, rare, beautiful thing. i love that oprah promoted it or else i would likely never had read it. On two seperate occasions, while reading the book in Starbucks, middle-aged-Oprah-type women (i'm a 22 year old former street youth) have approached me to talk and bond about this emotional rollercoaster we both enjoyed. They didn't try to spoil the end, they weren't know-it-alls, they were perhaps The Least Likely To Enjoy a Book Using The Terms mutherfucker/vomit/crackpipe/urine/cocksucker. And thats the amazing part, this book was a common ground, a wavelength we met each other on. It was the kind of communication that doesn't have time for class division, snobery, or fear. its called love.. love of a book, understanding of human suffering.. the haunting symphony of life.

Who really cares 'in what way' this book came into being. If a three eyed orange monkey from Mars wrote it and called it a memoir, i would look him in the eye(s), put my hand on his shoulder, and say "thankyou".

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The recovery process is about honesty.

Honesty within yourself. Honesty with others.

A dishonest book, when all is said and done, is not going to serve the those who need to "do" recovery. It's not going to "help" thousands of addicts. Yea, Million Pieces is a good "story" to those who do not need to go through recovery. Lots of drama and that sort of thing. But anyone who has done recovery in a TC (Therapeutic Community) like Hazelden can see this book as BS through and through. And imagine that addict who goes to a TC, bewildered, saying, "this isn't like the book at all." To bad the honesty and values Queen (the big "O") doesn't get it.

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The main point of the memoir is his drug and alcohol addiction. I have been an addict myself. Started when I was 14...Im 18. No book I have ever read as come close to describing how I've felt besides James Freys A Million Little Pieces. You can not describe those feelings write like he wrote without having been through it. Who really cares about less then 20 pages of the book that he exaggerated. The smokingun article is ridiculous. Have some respect when you write. I stand by James Frey and his book. I would if it was anyones else as well. If you havnt read the book maybe you should before you make up your mind about it. Maybe Larry King should have read the book before he interviewed the author. That might make a little more sense.

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I don't give a rat's behind if every aspect of his arrests or other details were factual. If you don't get the hard core truth about addiction that he's giving you as a gift, you just don't get it and you never will. Don't be such dummies and buy into the media bullshit that has to spend its time and energy trying to justify itself!

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Ah, how fascinating this all is to me, an individual with a previous drinking problem, who has worked in the publishing industry, and views Oprah and her mentally mediocre ilk as the show-biz equivalent of G. Bush & Co in this treacly culture of ours.

One huge, painful lesson I have learned in my journery through the addiction world is that misconception, deception and ignorance reigns supreme in this hermetic universe. That Frey is a bad writer seems indisputable to me. That he has added to the confusion and abject ignorance that pervades most people's thinking on addiction also seems rather obvious. And that Ms. O has aided and abetted this ignorance with her loudmouth and high horse is, well, beyond regrettable.

Ironically, for me, the one thing that Frey got right was his careful and studied avoidance of AA, an orgaization at this point probably does more harm than good, with its rigid and dogmatic double-binds and overzealous members who use the meetings to flog there own insecurities behind the mask of "honesty."

So Frey's book basically perpetuates the dangerous paradigm of "AA or the highway. Unfortunately, there are many, many people out there who WANT HELP, WHO NEED HELP, only to find out that it isn't there. Many people quit and stay quit on there own. Some people find AA helpful. But many people need and want help that is not AA, and it is wholly lacking. This is the real scandal in this country, the lack of choice, and it's the problem that OPRAH should be addressing, rather than touting poorly written tomes written by deceiving, self-aggrandizing hacks like Jimmy F.

And while people are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. To wit: most people who develop drug and alcohol problems solve them on THEIR OWN, WITHOUT ANY OR VERY LITTLE HELP. The way we treat addictions in this country is akin to how society treated the mentally ill in the 18th and 19th century---herd'em all together in a room, trot out the 10 commandments (12 steps) and bible (the big book) and force them to repent.

Addiction is not a moral shortcoming, as AA insists, nor is it a weakness, as Frey insists. It is a serious psychological affliction that deserves nothing less than serious psychological intervention from professionals competent professionals---for those who seek and need help---not "recovered" addicts passing themselves off as competent therapists whose knowledge consists of little more than 12-step mumbo-jumbo.

So the real scandal in this county is the almost complete absence of viable and widespread alternatives to AA (if AA helps you, fine, but let's be honest about the fact that just as everyone is different, every addict,too, is different, and thus different modalities of therapy are required).

Rather than having a discussion about the scandalous state of addiction treatment in this country, we are instead inundated with phony controversies about the veracity, or lack thereof, of bad writers like Frey and the dolts and flacks like Oprah who support them.

People like Frey and Oprah not only deserve to be "clowned," they ought to be taken out back behind the nearest television studio and flogged, preferably with copies of the "A million Little Pieces," and the Big Book....

Mazel tov!

g

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As a recovering drug addict myself I believe that this book shines incrediable light on a lifestyle that a lot of society is blind to. Whether or not he fabricated small parts of his criminal history does not in anyway take from the overall message of this book. The book is comfort to a lot of people out there, a lot of people like me who found hope and strength from anothers similar misfortune. James Frey gives everyone insight into a world that is full of struggle and pain. He shows that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

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