Know why? Because they have sold over 3.4 million copies of the so-called memoir. Let's do the math. Let's see, 3.4 million copies.... Let's just pretend they sold 3.2 million paperbacks and 200K hardbacks. At $14.95 and $24.95 respectively, times a 25% discount most people probably got on amazon and stuff, that's
So no, they don't give a flying donut hole in hell whether James Frey lived it, made it up, or pulled it out of his ass. They're running with it -- or, as they actually said:
You bet it does -- emphasis on the "millions"!The power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers.
Does it really matter whether James Frey lived the harrowing life he described in his "non-fiction" book? Does it really matter whether JT Leroy is a 21-year-old diamond in the shit? Isn't the poetry of their work justification enough? Does it really have to be true that that, well, really true way?
Yes -- partly because of those phantom WMDs. The US, the UK, and several other suckers went to war largely over those WMDs, spent billions of dollars, killed tens of thousands of people and injured hundreds of thousands, and left Iraq "mildly radioactive" (as the overly serious Christian Parenti put it at last night's reading at the Make Out Room) -- all because it depends on the definition of what "is" is.
There were WMDs in Iraq... or there were not. James Frey did do time and fall in love with a fellow junkie whom he tragically could not save... or he did not. JT Leroy really exists... or s/he doesn't. Scooter Libby did break the law by leaking Valerie Plame's name... or he didn't say anything.
You know, at some point, words must mean something. Not just sound pretty. Not just paint a realistic picture. Words that are labelled non-fiction must be not fiction, they must be fact.
Or would you rather words mean anything, anything at all?
5 comments:
check your math - I think you're off by a factor of 10 or so.
Nicely put, Mark.
Yo, math is hard! That'l teach me to format Excel cells so the commas are put in. Thanks for the correction, anonymous.
Your math is accurate. I understand why anonymous wouldnt use his name.
From author/blogger Ron Franscell at http://underthenews.blogspot.com ...
American literature -- considered an oxymoron in the rest of the world -- has gone downhill fast since New York surrendered America's storytelling standards to Hollywood, where illusion -- EVEN IN TRUE STORIES -- is exactly the point. Today, the "perfect" story is determined by its film-worthiness more than its literary quality. In the name of creating Californicated literature, New York editors have blurred the line until even they don't know what's true. "It's a good story," they'll say, "so who cares if it's an utter and ballsy lie?"
I care. Capote admitted on the bookjacket that "In Cold Blood" was fictionalized in some part. Coleridge's definition of fiction was "the willing suspension of disbelief." What if it's not willing? That's the difference between making love and rape, albeit without either the exhilaration or violence. If you thought you were reading a true story, you were conned. What if we found out next week that the famous Zapruder film was, in fact, a Hollywood dramatization passed off as a hyper-realistic eyewitness home-movie and you shoulda seen the look on your face and, oh, isn't it funny how we fooled you??
This is the literary equivalent of Reality TV. They tell you what you're seeing is real, but it's not real at all. It's simulated reality, edited into convenient 30-minute bytes ... and we eat it up.
In America today, we live with too much fiction posing as fact. Blogs, books, politics, TV, videogaming, movies -- and some would say, even the news -- thrive on it. But it's not art to swear you're telling the truth and then fib. That's just common lying. The artful trick is to tell me you're lying and make me believe every word is true.
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