Is anyone else baffled by the press that Frey is getting for his "Million Little Pieces"Flap? Now I've never read the book because I never thought that another drug rehab memoir would be particularly interesting, but the outrage that people are feeling is amazing.
This just in:
* Thoreau spent two years at Walden Pond, but in the book he says he was only there for one!
* Dave Eggers has long emotional, insightful conversations with his 12 year old brother in "HBWoSG" using quotation marks! But we all know that conversations don't go that smoothly, especially with a pre-teen, no matter how precocious.
* Washington Irving created a pseudonym for many of his short stories. Why couldn't he take responsibility for his writing?
Obviously, this Frey nonsense is just that. I've always thought that the only thing good about that book was the cover. Frey should be congratulated for writing something that touched people emotionally, no matter how fictitious. Hemingway once said “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished with one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer." By this definition, Frey achieved what most cold, modern novels can only dream of.
Where is the outrage at movies that are based on true stories but fudge the facts to make for better stories? Munich, anyone?
