A Million Little Pieces

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A Million Little Pieces is a partly fabricated^[1] memoir by James Frey. It tells the story of a 23-year-old alcoholic and drug abuser and how he copes with rehabilitation in a Twelve Steps-oriented treatment center.

Released widely in April 2003, the book garnered international attention after it was reported, in January 2006, that the book contained outright fabrications and was not, as originally represented by the author and publisher, a completely factual memoir. (See details of controversy further below.)

In September of 2005, the book became an Oprah's Book Club selection. The book shortly thereafter was the number one paperback "non-fiction" book on the New York Times Best Seller list for 15 straight weeks and quickly became the number 1 book on Amazon.com. By January 28, 2006, it had fallen to number four on the Amazon.com list with Winfrey's following selection, Night by Elie Wiesel, taking over the top position.

A notable feature of this book is its lack of quotation marks to indicate direct discourse. Instead, a new line is started each time. The fact that the author uses this same style to indicate his internal thoughts, often interspersed between direct discourse from himself and others, gives the book a unique and sometimes confusing writing style, purportedly reflecting the nature of his experience in the treatment center.

A film adaptation was said to be in development with Mark Romanek attached to direct. Since the disclosure in January 2006 that much of the book is fiction, there are questions about whether the film will be made.

1 Summary
2 Controversy
3 The book in popular culture
4 References
5 External links
- 5.1 Reviews

[edit] Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The book begins with a badly tattered James waking on an airplane on his way to a rehabilitation clinic. James is 23 years old, and has been an alcoholic, drug addict and criminal for roughly 10 years of his life. As he checks into his rehab clinic, he is forced to quit cold turkey, a transition that probably saves his life, but is also an incredibly agonizing event in the short term.

Throughout his stay, he refuses to buy into the notion of victimhood. He instead manages to weather the taxing treatment without complaint or blame. Without any anesthesia, he even manages to undergo a series of painful root canals by squeezing tennis balls until his nails crack.

When challenged on this incident, specifically, during his second Oprah appearance, Frey said that it may have been "more than one" root canal procedure and may or may not have included Novocaine, as he remembers it.

The book follows James through the painful experience, and details many of the interesting people he meets.

Spoilers end here.

[edit] Controversy

After a six week long investigation, The Smoking Gun published an article on January 8, 2006 called A Million Little Lies. The article described gross fabrications in Frey's account of his drug abuse experiences, life, and criminal record.[2] According to CNN, The Smoking Gun's Editor, William Bastone, "the probe was prompted after the Oprah show aired". He further stated, "We initially set off to just find a mug shot of him... It basically set off a chain of events that started with us having a difficult time finding a booking photo of this guy". [3]

The Minneapolis Star Tribune had questioned James Frey's claims as early as 2003. Frey responded then by saying, "I've never denied I've altered small details."

Recently, stories surfaced about Random House, publisher of A Million Little Pieces, deciding to give full refunds to anyone who has purchased this book directly through them. [4] These reports, however, later proved to be taken out of context, as the refund offer is general policy and not a special offer for A Million Little Pieces. [5]

On January 26, 2006, Frey once again appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and admitted that the same "demons" that had made him turn to alcohol and drugs had also driven him to fabricate crucial portions of his "memoir"; it first having been shopped as being a fiction novel but declined by many, including Random House itself. Oprah told Frey that she felt "really duped" but that, "more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers." She also apologized for her previous telephoned statement to Larry King Live—when Frey appeared on that show January 11, 2006—that what mattered was not the truth of Frey's book, but its value as a therapeutic tool for addicts. She said, "I left the impression that the truth is not important."[6]

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

On January 13, 2006, Steven Levitt, co-author of the book Freakonomics, stated in his blog that, having searched the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention database of mortality detail records, he was unable to identify a single death that reasonably closely matched Frey's description of the circumstances of the death of "Lilly", Frey's alleged girlfriend in the book. [7] Following Frey's admission to Winfrey that he had altered Lilly's method of suicide in the book from cutting her wrists to hanging, on January 27, 2006, Levitt recorded on his blog that he was again unable to find a recorded death consistent with Frey's revised description. [8] As Levitt states,

"Frey’s primary defense has been to say that his criminal history is a minor part of the book and these inconsistencies do not substantively change the meaning of the story. Of course, his criminal history is the only thing that thesmokinggun.com actually looked into. Given that virtually nothing checked out, it doesn’t bode well for the veracity of the rest of the book."

Spoilers end here.

On January 27, 2006, in the Moscow-based alternative newspaper the eXile, essayist John Dolan leveled charges of plagiarism against Frey, accusing him of lifting material from Another Day in Paradise and Steel Toes, both written by the late drug-addict/author Eddie Little.[9] Neither Frey, nor his publisher Random House, have addressed the allegations of plagiarism.

Random House issued a statement regarding the controversy. It noted that future editions of the book would contain notes from both the publisher and Frey on the text, as well as prominent notations on the cover and on their website about the additions. It also noted that future printings of the book would be delayed until these changes were made, and these additions were also being sent out promptly to booksellers for inclusion in previously shipped copies of the book.

In Frey's note to readers, which will be included in future editions of the book, he apologized for fabricating portions of his book and for having made himself seem "tougher and more daring and more aggressive than in reality I was, or I am." He added,

"People cope with adversity in many different ways, ways that are deeply personal. [...] My mistake [...] is writing about the person I created in my mind to help me cope, and not the person who went through the experience."

Frey admitted that he had literary reasons for his fabrications, as well:

"I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all great stories require." Nevertheless, he defended the right of memoirists to draw upon their memories, not simply upon documented facts, in creating their memoirs [10]. Additionally, Frey has discussed the controversy and stated his side of the argument on his blog. [11].

Shortly after Frey's return to the Oprah Winfrey show, the Brooklyn Public Library went as far as recataloging Frey's book as fiction, although it appears most other libraries have not followed suit. The New York Times Best Seller list still includes it on the Paperback Nonfiction List as of September 2006.

Regardless of this controversy, [12] this book has sold over 3.5 million copies. According to Nielsen BookScan, the book sold 1.77 million of these copies in the U.S. alone . The majority of these sales occurred after Oprah announced it as the new Oprah's Book Club Book mwa.

[edit] The book in popular culture

Since the controversy broke, parodies of the book have come out, including A Million Little Lies, from ReganBooks, [13], and A Million Little Pieces of Feces by Python Bonkers.
The South Park episode "A Million Little Fibers" parodies the entire controversy.

[edit] References

^ Frey admitted in interviews that he had embellished central details of his criminal career and purported incarceration for "obvious dramatic reasons." [1]