The Encyclopedia of Misinformation by Rex Sorgatz

Author:Rex Sorgatz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2018-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

MILLION LITTLE PIECES, A

A Million Little Pieces is a novel that was marketed as a memoir. If you google the title or its author today, a vast nebula of stories about Oprah Winfrey will curiously appear.

Published in 2003, the memoir depicts the harrowing experiences of James Frey, a twenty-three-year-old alcoholic who commits several crimes and copes with rehab in a tough guy persona. (“Fuck that bullshit” was his canny slogan.) The book initially achieved only moderate sales, but two years after its release, it skyrocketed to the top of the best-seller list when Oprah handpicked the gritty tale for her illustrious book club. After Frey appeared on her show, the book sold more than 5 million copies and topped the New York Times Best Sellers list for fifteen straight weeks.

Then in 2006, the muckraking website The Smoking Gun published a massive investigation, “A Million Little Lies,” showing the book had serious factual flaws. Frey, it appeared, had fabricated or exaggerated vast swaths of his epic tale of criminality, loss, and emergency unanesthetized root canals. He was indeed an alcoholic who went to rehab—as a child of privilege, he matriculated to the swanky Hazelden Treatment Center outside Minneapolis—but now it seemed he had learned only one thing from his addiction: how to convincingly lie.

At first, Oprah prevaricated. Defending her princeling, she said the “underlying message of redemption” depicted in the book revealed an “essential truth.” To her, the controversy was “much ado about nothing.” What you believe, her sentiment seemed to imply, is more important than the truth.

In a rare lapse, Oprah was behind the curve on this one. Among the literati, a revolt against Frey was simmering. What started as modest indignation over fibs had turned into moral outrage over unconscionable mendacity. Pious editorials piled atop each other, dubbing Frey a dissembler, a charlatan, a phonybaloney scoundrel. Oprah was forced to respond.

She started with an apology to her viewers. “I made a mistake,” she said on Larry King Live. “I left the impression that the truth does not matter. And I am deeply sorry about that, because that is not what I believe.” Then she reinvited Frey onto her show, under the auspices of a discussion about “Truth in America.” In a provocative twist, she was fibbing about the topic to get Frey and his publisher onto the show. Hell hath no fury like an Oprah scorned.

“James Frey is here,” she begins, turning to her subject. “And I have to say it is difficult for me to talk to you because I feel really duped.” Fists clenched, she eviscerates Frey, accusing him of extensive lying. His girlfriend did not hang herself, he did not spend months in jail, he did not have a root canal without anesthesia. Liar, liar, pants on fire!

Regarding the apocryphal root canal, Frey begins a penitent response. “Since that time, I’ve struggled with the idea of it—”

“No,” Oprah pounces, “the lie of it. That’s a lie. It’s not an idea, James. That’s a lie.”

At the end of the hour-long whipping, Frey attempts contrition.

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