A million little lies
I’m often a slave to pop culture, and in no arena is that more true than literature–books and magazines. I love People and Us, even stooping so far as to read Star or In Touch for a fix of unadulterated gossip-rag content.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy “real” books, ’cause I do–by the dozens. But I don’t need to be coaxed to pick up the latest serial Gothic horror, or unintentionally hilarious pop psych drivel. I love to see what the masses are reading (Oprah’s book club) or check out the tomes from the back pages of the tabloids (you know, the “best sellers”).
I’m sure classic readers are troubled by the modern media market. But they really just need to get over themselves. The existence of Clancy doesn’t somehow go back in time and destroy the writings of Chaucer.
But, admittedly, some of the trash I read–the glut of partially-true autobiographical fiction, formulaic genre fiction, minimally-qualified self-help or tragi-inspirational books–are pretty soft territory. But it’s soft and gooey, like some sort of marshmallow confection.
Unfortunately, it’s often the sort of candy that looks great in the wrapper, and is the sweetness you’d imagined for a bite or two. But it quickly gets cloying and makes you want to gag. You can’t spit it out, nor can you stop reading… er, eating until the whole thing is gone.
It all started when K brought home the widely-spurned A Million Little Pieces. She was knee-deep in gifted holiday books, so I got first crack at it. I figured it for light reading and, after all the news, was curious to see what kind of a bullshit artist Frey really is.
Basic answer: a really crappy one.
I fail to see how anyone could actually buy this dude’s macho testosterone-drenched tale, much less go absolutely ga-ga over it. A best seller? WTF?
But, wait: I’ve got a little theory about that.
Frey’s novel is a bad-boy’s trip through rehab. Instead of being broken and rebuilt, he is such an enormous swinging prick that he bends aside the most critical rules, abandons the Higher Power concept, and just generally is an enormous egotistical ass. But, yet, the staff and other patients all find his gross melodrama admirable and inspiring. He finds that the cure to his addictions is–as oh-so-many would like it to be–the same damn recipe as the cause… just more of it.
And perhaps that is the secret behind the book’s success. It is not so much a view of a man’s trip through rehab, or an inspirational tale. It’s what we’d like the answer to rehab to be. We’d like to think that an addict’s true redemption lies in personal strength. We want the cause of addiction to be a convenient blameless package. Of course, we want to think that it can’t possibly happen to us, but we totally believe that, if it did, we’d be strong enough to conquer it. We must believe it conquerable.
Can you really say that a disease with recovery rates in the toilet is defeatable?
I know, I know–Various outfits report reasonable recovery rates. Though I’m sure it’s possible at least one of them is accurate, recovery rates are all over the map. Some studies claim it’s 5% annually, or 1% or 10%. Some claim that, over a lifetime, half of those who abuse alcohol will simply stop drinking. Some say a quarter will stop, still others claim only a sparse few can manage this. Somewhere between 1 and 10 percent die.
But most–most–agree that half or more than half of people who are believed to be alcoholics can’t stop. And something like 5% die every year from this disease.
So with this knowledge (or rather the lack thereof), can I say that Frey’s bull-headed methods won’t work? Of course not. But can I speculate that his account is largely fictional by the lack of evidence and laughably shallow plot? You betcha.
First of all, let’s get this out of the way: I hate the protagonist. Or the author. Or both.
It’s possible to heartily dislike a protagonist, and still buy their story. But not this one. Even if you toss aside the loving descriptions of vomiting, the grosser-than-thou mutilation, and the relentlessly self-promotional dialogue, you still at heart have a bunch of claims that don’t make much factual sense.
For one, the cross-demographic romance between Frey’s lady-doctor and the ex-patient who drives the center’s van. Their relationship is extraordinarily open. A doctor/patient love story? Only in the movies! That sort of thing would invite all kinds of questions. Questions about lawsuits.
Secondly, the bus driver sits in on some of Frey’s appointments, a practice I can hardly believe would be allowed. This same driver also helps hijack the company van to rescue Lilly (Frey’s forbidden love) from a crack house.
In what universe would that driver NOT be fired?
Speaking of Lily: Those looking to find factual support for this wild tale tend to focus on Frey’s fey girlfriend, a doe-eyed and raven-haired lost little girl he meets via longing glance across the rehab clinic dining hall. His description of her is so wooden she’s practically Pinocchio.
The manner of her death (Frey claims she committed suicide by hanging herself from a shower head) seems somewhat improbable, and many have tried to find a matching case among the area’s death records. Some claim nothing of the sort exists; others say there are similar-enough incidents that verification is inconclusive.
There are obvious, provable “exaggerations” in the narrative. Frey’s claim that he was a Criminal (capital-C, of course) is dubious at best. As The Smoking Gun discovered, the book’s sordid tales of jail time and serious and violent criminal activity are largely falsified. Though Frey claims to have spent as much as 3 months in jail, in actuality he was only there a few days and was bailed out for less than $1000.
Now, one could assume that Frey had his records fixed by mob boss Leonard, as he mentions in the novel. But the novel itself (and, apparently, his second book), goes into great detail about the days he does spend in the lock-up. Days that aren’t on record at any facility that would have held Frey. There is similarly no records of his many arrests. And thought it would have been possible for Leonard to expunge records, could he also erase the memories of arresting officers? Amend the records of dispatchers or memories of witnesses?
And because Frey is caught in this lie, he has admitted that some portions of the narrative are fabricated. He claims that he was under intense pressure from his publisher to release a memoir instead of fiction. He has not been specific about what is and is not real (citing, usually, privacy issues), but I guess that’s still not the point, as vindicating as it may be.
The crux of the biscuit, as the apostropher might say, is that people totally bought his tale, regardless of its flagrant lack of anything resembling logic. People, right now, are out there on the interwebs defending him. There is some hard-working schmo at this moment poised over a giant glass of whiskey, feeling like he’s got to prove to himself that he is a tough guy.
That’s not bravery. That bravado.
And this whole book’s that way. It’s not treatment, it’s a what treatment would be if populated by a hack screenwriter. I mean, could you not smell the Al Pacino sprinkled liberally over Leonard?
I don’t have issue with a good tale, and not even with a good tale that takes from the real world.
I do, however, see the fault with a tale that is supposed to be true, and supposed to be inspirational, but is so blatantly pumped-up that it’s almost a caricature. Frey (or his publishers) shouldn’t have succumbed to greed so easily. And if they really intended on deceiving people to make a fast buck, they probably shouldn’t have been so foolish as to think that such a preposterous yarn would stand up to the barest scrutiny.
Should people like Oprah (and everyone else at Harpo, not to mention the countless people in the actual book club) have been a wee bit more discerning? A tiny bit more skeptical?
Uh, DUH. But then again, a good portion of the people out here believe that there might have been WMDs in Iraq and a host of other absolutely asinine myths. So what should I really expect?
Something that is not a lie
Haagen-Dazs half-fat coffee ice cream? Awesome.
A note: I didn’t realize the title of The Smoking Gun’s article was the same until I went and looked it up. Obviously, I went with the blatant headline. Sue me.