I know I'm late to the show, but thanks to TIVO, I finally saw the Oprah interview with James Frey, the author of A Million Little Pieces, where she basically raked him over the goals and made him sit on the couch of humiliation. We all learned that if you try and dupe Oprah, you will pay dearly. We also learned that people will not stand for anything less than the truth. One of the things I love about blogs and blogging is that the driving force is the truth. It's about authenticity in the blogosophere.
There are all kinds of opinions about what happened during this interview, and about the book itself. I read the book because I saw the show where Oprah announced it as her book of choice for her Oprah Book Club. She said that if you were to only read one book in your whole life that this should be it. She really talked up this book, and because of that I chose to read it. I was also interested in reading A Million Little Pieces because it was about addiction and recovery. This guy was addicted to drugs, and was at rock bottom. He was determined to get his life back, and the book details all the messy, harsh details of his recovery. I was intrigued because as I mentioned before, self help books don't get into the yucky specifics of the healing process which is the part I want to read about. In Mr. Frey's book, you get to touch, taste, and smell, his healing path. This is why I believe the book was so popular, and why so many people were devastated when they learned of the lies. We are sold on the story that this guy is just like the rest of us and that he has a serious addiction which he is facing up to. Many of us cannot face that kind of honesty. We get to experience his recovery, and in doing so, we get to heal ourselves through the wisdom of his pain and strength. For some people, the book gives them the inspiration to start the journey of their own recovery.
Personally, I thought the book was okay. I wasn't riveted or thought it was the best book ever. Oprah and I have different tastes. But, I did like the specific details he gave of how screwed up he was, and the process of fixing what was broken like his teeth, and spirit. Some say it was a mistake for James Frey to go on Oprah, and many say that they hate this guy because he lied. I will have to say that as much as I dislike people who lie to profit monetarily from it, I give this guy credit for taking the public punishment in front of millions of people on the Oprah show, and admitting his mistake. We never got to see any of the Enron guys or the Worldcom guys take their medicine in public and admit their mistakes, and the greed and lies of these guys caused thousands of people to lose their life savings. In comparison, James Frey only cost us the price of his book, and a let down. It is not at all pretty or a neat package, but it is human, and I hope that James Frey learns from his mistakes.
