Fraters Libertas

I'm Asking You Sugar, Would I Lie To You?

The Smoking Gun looks into James Frey's "true life" stories as told in the Oprah-hyped A Million Little Pieces and finds A Million Little Lies. Their report is exhaustive, devastating, and lengthy, but well worth the read. Looks like some editors and gatekeepers in the publishing world have been snoozing on the job.

Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey's book. The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw "wanted in three states."

In hindsight, it's amazing that people were so willing to swallow this guy's incredible tales with little or no scrutiny. It appears that members of the fairer sex were especially likely to ignore their natural BS detectors when it came to Frey:

Winfrey clearly recognized the book's appeal to her largely female audience. When he's not banging hookers or having a gal snort cocaine off his penis, Frey shows a deep, and often sweet, reverence for the women with whom he is involved. At turns volatile and vulnerable, chivalrous and brutish, Frey is a true reclamation project, complete with puke- and snot-stained clothing. What's a girl not to love?

Pursuing Frey documents, we were struck by the number of people TSG contacted who were either reading, or had already read, "A Million Little Pieces" as a result of the Winfrey endorsement. When we sent copies of the book to a pair of male cops, the volumes were quickly commandeered by their respective significant others. When a Michigan sheriff's aide sent us an old Frey mug shot, she enclosed a handwritten letter noting, "And by the way, I am reading his 1st book "A Million Little Pieces" & can't put it down." An Ohio police chief told us that his dispatcher had finished the book two weeks before we first called. Friends and relatives, too, were reading Frey, with one acquaintance reporting that she bought the book after seeing three other women reading it in her Metro-North railroad car.

Something for the gals out there to keep in mind: when a guy is feeding you a story that sounds too good (or in this case too bad) to be true, it probably is.

(Via the Eater of Cake)