As you may or may not know, a man named James Frey wrote a book several years ago, "A Million Little Pieces", an autobiographical story of drug addiction and criminal lifetstyle. It was a top seller and was famously a part of Oprah's book club by virtue of the very gritty, graphic nature of the story and the underlying message of inspiration.
Then along comes
The Smoking Gun, which exposes many of "Pieces" scenarios as heavily-embellished or outright fraudulent. At first Frey angrily denied the charges but has since relented.
Now, in what has to be the most humiliating event of any man's life in this century, he re-appeared on Oprah's show, where he was
promptly and bluntly dressed down by the hostess. His answers were dodgy and avoidant.
I haven't read the book, as true-life inspiration stories really aren't my thing, but I'm curious to now.
Given that he has essentially conceded his guilt, I am given to rather dislike this man for being given such a golden opportunity to find literary success and using it to basically make a profit off of lies and fabrications. This is totally okay, except when you pass your story off as non-fiction. I would kill to not only publish my work, but to see the same kind of success he has seen.
Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?
The whole problem was he tried to make it seem like everything in the book happened to him. I can concede embellishing details to make a better story as it is done in books as well as movies about real-life events all the time, but his book was a pretty blatant fabrication from what I've heard, and he was passing it off as all true. He'll think twice before crossing paths with the big O again.
I have no problem with him writing a book like this, but that's not really the point. What he did was scam people out of their money by passing off a work of inspired fiction as a true-to-life account. It's wrong and it was a lie.
lmao wtf? It's an inspirational book that was probably put through many test audiences (his friends, other authors, etc) in order to create the most entertaining book he could. In fact, so entertaining that Oprah put on her must-have list.
What he sold was ENTERTAINMENT fashioned to inspire people, to give a message about drug addiction and how a guy overcame it. The so-called lies are nothing more than over-dramatization which is WHY people like the book or books in general or anything that has to do with MEDIA for the purposes of ENTERTAINMENT
There are thousands upon thousands of biographical news articles, books, TV shows and films that add more drama to the story to make it more entertaining or to strengthen the resolve of the story. James Cameron said during an interview about Titanic that the false-smoke stack on the Titanic probably wouldn't have fallen as it did but it offered a huge chance to increase the drama so he jumped on it. *GASP* The sinking of Titanic wasn't completely faithful to the true life events! Let's all put Cameron on Larry King Live and remove his testicles!
People are taking this totally the wrong way and most of it is because when Smoking Gun ran the article, Oprah went on Larry King Live to defend the book still having a good message and then got a backlash of her rabid fan base who said 'Oprah supports liars!!!!1one" so she had to retaliate and spend an entire show apologizing. It's retarded.
It doesn't matter if its lies or little embelishments or if he had to adjust the time line to make certain 'scenes' happen in the most entertaining way, all that matters is: IS THE BOOK GOOD OR NOT. Hasn't anyone here heard of a 'semi-biographical' story? Like if someone made an autobiography about Staleny Kubrick and threw in some personal ideals of his views even though there's no record of him saying those views, it's just assumed to put the story in a certain scope for people to be entertained by.
God there are so many misprints, misreadings, untrue statements, half-truths, outright bullshit, biased force-fed commercialism, etc etc in so many venues of our education and religious systems and our so-called news sources and we throw a hissy fit because some former drug addict who cleaned up wanted to inspire other addicts to clean up? What a cluster fuck. I seriously hope the bird flu takes off and we cut down atleast 90% of the world's population asap.
Lazy, you're missing the whole point of the outrage. Even when reports began to surface that the guy had made a lot of the facts up he still stood by the fact that everything in the book was true. If he hadn't made such a big deal about the book being true people wouldn't have cared since we all know autobiographical works all have embellishments and exaggerations. It's the fact that Frey made up a lot of stuff and then tried to pass it all of like it was real that has people upset.
I 100% agree with lazy. (oh god, now I feel dirty) :p
Quote:to defend the book still having a good message
That's what
really matters, and from what I've heard before this mess is that is was truly inspirational. So it didn't all happen, is the message of the book any less valuable?
Paco agreed with me, that's gotta be one of the signs of the end-time.
DMiller/ He defended the validity for obvious reasons, he didn't want to put the book in any negative light. He was probably told my multiple people involved (his agent, publicist, etc) to deny everything because it will hurt sales of the book. The only reason this thing went pear shaped is because Oprah told the world it's a great book and HER reputation was on the line and she wanted to have a public display of her innosense in the ordeal. It's all bullshit, everyone 'adds another line' to a story everytime they tell it so that it generates more impact especially if there's a moral in question (and/or a comedic flair).
If he was advertising it as fiction, that would be one thing. That's like doing a seance under the guide of a magician doing a stage trick.
What he did was claim that the story was accurate, and that is the problem. If he makes that claim, he must abide by it and be honest. Otherwise, if he intends on writing fiction, then he must make it clear it is fiction. That's what is the issue here. If the lesson stands on it's own, then it can stand being sold as fiction.
That said, if he had been honest about the book being a work of fiction we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
To say it was honest and not embellished at all, despite whether or not that is common practice, is still just as desceptive as a magician with a parlor trick trying to con people out of money by claiming they really can talk with ghosts.
He tried to have it published as fiction but it was turned down by several publishers. He then turned around and called it non-fiction and it was eventually picked up. He didn't call it non-fiction because it was true, he called it non-fiction because it helped his career.
So we agree then.
However, lying just to help one's career is bad. You see, lies are eventually found out and people don't take kindly to being mislead.
I don't care that the book is classified as non-fiction. As I said most autobiographies are embellished so I don't care about that. It's the fact that he outright denied that there were exaggerations and lies in the book until he was trapped in a corner and forced to tell the truth. And I'm not letting Oprah off the hook on this either. Yes, she was duped, but the way she made things "right" was to get the guy back on her show and lambast him to make sure people would think twice before lying to her. Again, a book that promotes a good message like A Millions Little Pieces is great, but don't try to sell it as the truth if most of the book is embellished or pure fabrication. People would still accept the story if they knew it to be an embellishment of the facts from the beginning.
Exactly.
And yes, sometimes facts are "embellished" in autobiographies, but in those cases I still think that when discovered as such, a note needs to be added, and that such lies are not acceptable.
I'm saying that while it is natural for someone to add a line or two to a story, it is also in our nature to resist that (or we wouldn't be capable of resisting) and try to make sure it's "just the facts ma'am".
What repulses me about the affair isn't so much that he embellished. I understand that's human nature. If you tell an autobiographical story perfectly straight, it's dull and uninteresting.
However, he didn't merely embellish. He actually made up entire parts of this book. Notable was a piece where he claimed that he was thought of as responsible or involved in some girl's death, when in reality he had absolutely no involvement with her, and no one related to this girl had any idea who he was.
The fact isn't that he embellished. The fact is he told flagrant lies for the sole purpose of selling his novel and becoming rich, which is exactly what he did. Was it inspiring? I guess enough people think so. However, some people, like myself, still thing integrity is a virtue, and I hate that he damages not only his own reputation, but now people will call the integrity of people like him into question. Meanwhile, he pulled off a fantastic scam job and is laughing all the way to the bank.
This is more a matter of honesty than integrity. For all we know he doesn't actually hold honesty as a value, in which case lying would still maintain integrity :D.
Not that I think that. I think basically he just was a little weak against some publisher's suggestions. He should have been stronger. I'm not saying he should have rewritten the book. I'm just saying he should have labelled it as fiction.
Also, there is a difference between writing the truth in a poetic way and just adding things that aren't true to a story. I've heard stuff regarding the nature of star formation told in a very poetic way that wasn't in the least bit misleading and fully accurate in the details. For example "We are the way for the universe to know itself" is a very poetic way of basically saying "humans are a part of the universe and are capable of attempting to understand how it works".
Lying in print is definitely a big issue... sure, popular fiction or nonfiction doesn't have the same burden of proof of an academic work in reality, but if it's being published as nonfiction you should ideally be able to assume that it does... though yes, if it's personal memoirs it is true that it is generally assumed that they are not completely accurate, it is also assumed that the things said are mostly based on reality (that is, memoirs are usually written with some kind of goal in mind -- to exonerate onesself for their actions, say, or to show how their way was right and not the ways of others (eg. leaders of some failed rebellion all either blaming eachother or denying responsibility) -- that determines what the author says more than the truth does)... but just lies, made up in order to get the book to sell better? I know it happens, but it's not right.
... yeah, that's the history major in me talking. :)
This guy, from what I understand, actually originally intended to market it as fiction, which is fine, except he later labelled it as nonfiction per the advice of his publisher. He was wrong in listening to this advice (nonfiction is NOT just a marketting buzz word!), and the publisher was wrong in giving it.
The events are still true, he was still arrested but he wasn't beaten by the cops. His girlfriend commited suicide but he never apologized to the father, the events that he describes has the same outcome with over dramatized emotional filler. It makes less sense to call a story with true events a fictional story.
For this particular case the title of 'Semi-non-fiction' and/or 'Based on a true story' would have applied here. And books of such genre sell extremely well. In fact they sell better than full-on autobiography books. So why, if the book would have launched in to a genre where sales were already available, would he have gone with a nonfiction tag? The answer isn't sales, it's that all autobiographies embelish and lie and get away with the '100% accurate' dogma just by getting people to assume that it is. Frey went that same route, as per norm.
Then Oprah got involved, sales the of the book sky rocketed. Now look at what this guy is doing... he's releasing a book talking about his adult life. "I went to prison and got beat up by cops TEH HARDKORE IS ME" etc. To many people who simply cannot stand to see someone proclaim how awesome they are or how 'tough' they are, they want to get other people to despise the same things they do, so they try to descredit him. Poking fun at anything they can until while digging around, they find that some of the emotional filler that Oprah loved so much is actually either embelished or straight-up didn't happen. Like the cops beating him up.
So little Suzy Homemaker and Joan Q. Public read their Oprah book o'the month and fell in love with Frey, just like Oprah did. And then a website releases proof that some of the details (like, 3 of them, in the entire book) are false. The people who cant stand to see a person get credibility pat themselves on the back, the people who fell in love with him throw the book out while the people who only heard about the book after it was going through its death throws dismissed the book entirely, proclaiming Frey a liar and then Oprah has him explain on the show what really happened in those 3 events which of course were boring, unexciting, and disappointing, because that's how real life is.
Some of you should ask yourselves do you get angry when a sports star proclaims how great he is? Acts cocky and full of himself? Do you get angry when a film director acts like he's the jesus Christ of film when you know his films to be boring krap? or when a friend, co-worker etc gets everyone to love him when you know he's a jerk? Because of these few details that are false, inside of true events, you want the book to be placed in the 'Made up story" section of the book store, but the events STILL HAPPENED, he only describes them with more flair and emotional groundings, there's nothing in the book that's wholly fabricated.
He didn't do it for sales, he didn't do it trick anyone. He did what any good writer would do, take the events from real life and make them fun or amazing to read. A good writer can make a story about a snail crossing a sidewalk exciting, but in Frey's case it was a true story about a drug addict and the loss of his girlfriend. And while he didn't get beat up by cops, he was arrested for being disorderly, and while he didn't apologize to the father of the girlfriend, he did feel guilty for not being there for her and probably never got the courage up to apologize to him. So he did it in the book instead. What he did was, instead of giving the reader the true events in fact, he surprised us, motivated us emotionally and gave us entertainment. If he would have put the factual details in, it would have disappointed the reader and the emotional connection would be lost just as it did when he laid out the factual time line and happenings of the details in question on Oprah's show because real life is never fun or amazing to read several hundred pages about even if it's an autobiography about someone truly amazing, the writer still has to give the reader entertainment and follow structure of story telling. Which real life doesn't apply to.
And I agree lazy, as a work of fiction it likely is a great story. I'm not debating that. I'm saying that despite the fact that a lot of people are desceptive when making up karp in autobiographies, it doesn't make it right. People DO need to be trained to be more skeptical, this is true, but this is no real excuse. Make it clear in the book what you said about the nature of the fiction and that SHOULD be enough.
Lazy, I think you just don't understand how much stuff like lying in print (or plagarism) matters... primarially to academia and book people probably, but still, for stuff like this that is the best group of people to judge it... saying 'it doesn't matter because it's a story' or whatever when it was in fact passed off as truth when it was lies... these things do have consequences, and they greatly hurt the reputation of the writer. Like that professor I read about sometime who had to admit decades later that all of their stories about fighting in Vietnam they'd been telling for so long were lies and that he'd actually not fought there... to say nothing of plagarism scandals. That is perhaps even worse, and can almost irreparably ruin reputations... for some reason just making stuff up isn't considered quite as bad I guess...
It's fine to "just make up stuff" so long as you make it clear it is made up.
And further, it does more than hurt reputations. This sort of lying does damage to the individual. This sort of thing gives false impressions on what to expect from life.
Imagine now if instead of lying about stuff that at least COULD happen they took it too far and lied about things that couldn't happen. Imagine if this man wrote a story about his life and included a part where some police beat him up because of his drug addiction. Perhaps the goal may have been that while the story didn't happen, it "surely does" in this guy's mind and the idea is to get people outraged enough to do something about his imagined fear of police beating up drug users.
These are the "little jumps" people make. When they "know" something is true but can't find any proof they might just "exxagerate" by making up some personal "true story" that, while not exactly happening to THEM, they know has happened to SOMEONE, to prove a point.
By the way, the whole "other people get away with it all the time" thing is not a valid defense. James Frey got caught in his own lies and paid the price for it...AFTER he raked in millions of dollars on what amounted to borderline fraud.
1.) He didn't make it up.
2.) A side from some details, all of the events are true.
3.) None of you have any idea what you're talking about.
I cant explain this any clearer: a wholly factual 100% accurate book is called a textbook and is usually found in schools. It is almost always non-partisan and extremely dry, never going in to opinion (unless quoted) and consistently working in a third-person view. These types of books are usually a guided commercialy viable conception from a group of researchers who compile information about a particular subject and copy/paste anything that can or has been proven as accurate for the publisher. Anything that is not accurate is noted and seperated for the reader to show that it is a part of the subject though not logistically black and white or proven.
We are not talking about an educational book, it is an entertainment book, to entertain. This is not a group of people who made up their experiences in the Vietnam war, this is not plagerism, it was not created to put false ideals in to people's heads and no writer under any circumstance ever believes he or she will make "millions of dollars" from one book. The publisher might, but the writer will not, at most he will make a % from the sales that, perhaps in a few decades if the book remained on shelves and in the top 5, might reach "millions" in sales for the writer though that RARELY HAPPENS and of course his base pay which at most, is somewhere around the thousands to tens of thousands mark depending on the property, the publisher, how many publishers wanted the book, etc. He probably got a check for 5000 bucks and a 0.000000001% royalty for every book sold, as he is a new writer with no experience and an unknown property.
He is not a corporation nor is he a commercial endevour, he is one guy who typed up a story on his PC and then went around to publishers looking for a way to get the inspirational book on the market.
Let me explain again: Writing a story of true events has only two versions - the textbook and the entertainment book. One is informative, the other is entertaining. While the informative one is dry, lacks character and can be boring, the entertainment one can be amazing, dramatized and fun to read though often replacing or otherwise altering some of the details or time-line of events to apply the real life events in to something that is not boring.
Can anyone here write a 500 page story about their lives that will make Oprah's book of the month? I didn't think so. Now for anyone here who's ever writen anything, let me put you in his shoes:
Event title- Girlfriend commited suicide
Pre-event - ?
Event - Was out of town, called girlfriend and she said she was feeling bad, depressed. Returned to town to find out she had killed herself. Feeling guilty, I withdrew and was unable to speak to anyone.
Post event - ?
Now the conversation on the phone can fill up a page, maybe two, but I invite anyone here to make an entire chapter out of that and make it amazing, heart wrenching, fast paced, make people cry when they read it so they can feel exactly how you felt - make then feel the pain of losing someome to suicide.
I apologize for sounding like an egocentric ass but if anyone here had any formal education on writing you would realize how unfounded your opinions are. Mostly you're angry because had the book stayed out of Smoking Gun people would have continued to praise him, love him, call him amazing, hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of people would have a place in their heart for him and you guys are simply jealous - angry at how a person can be instantly loved and adored because he had a shitty life when we ALL have had a shitty life and ALL deserve to be loved and adored.
But the fact is, his GIRLFRIEND commited SUICIDE, do any of you have any idea what that can do to a person? Has anyone here even HAD a girlfriend or serious relationship for more than 5 years? or even more than a year? Has anyone here (i'm hoping Nickdaddy shows up for this one) spent a lifetime using drugs, losing your family's love over it, losing grasp on reality? living in a half-way house and the only thing on your mind is getting the next high? None of you can even begin to imagine such a thing, and in your ignorance you keep proclaiming the book to be a lie when in fact it is MOSTLY true and that the only untruths are things used to put the TRUE EVENTS in to perspective for people who cannot imagine such a life or such events and make them feel as if its happening to them, people who have always strived to do the right thing, stay away from drugs and love the family etc and occasionaly get that itch to just say fuck it and stop trying - well here's a book about what happens when you stop trying.
I know, you're all going to say i'm wrong, that you can imagine such things happening and they're not important and that he lied to trick you, take your money, etc. But atleast I'm able to attempt to help you guys see a bigger picture.
How this affected him is... irrelevent.
What is relevant is he labelled it as nonfiction. Society puts trust in that sort of label. Whether it is valid to do so or not, he should have been aware of this and labelled it accordingly.
I do not care what his motives were. They are irrelevent.
From Wikipedia:
Quote:On January 13, 2006, Steven Levitt, co-author of the book Freakonomics, stated in his website 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. [6] Following Frey's admission to Winfrey that he had altered Lilly's method of suicide in the book to hanging from cutting her wrists, 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. [7] 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."
From Kottke.org:
Quote: Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey's book. The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw "wanted in three states."
In additon to these rap sheet creations, Frey also invented a role for himself in a deadly train accident that cost the lives of two female high school students. In what may be his book's most crass flight from reality, Frey remarkably appropriates and manipulates details of the incident so he can falsely portray himself as the tragedy's third victim. It's a cynical and offensive ploy that has left one of the victims' parents bewildered. "As far as I know, he had nothing to do with the accident," said the mother of one of the dead girls. "I figured he was taking license...he's a writer, you know, they don't tell everything that's factual and true."
From MSNBC:
Quote:BASTONE: Well, I mean, the book, one of the incantations that he repeats in the book is that he was alcoholic, a drug addict and a criminal. And the criminal part of his past plays a very important role in the book.
And we decided to take a look at, you know, whether that actually happened and what he did was he blew out of proportion small incidents, especially the kind of single most important arrest described in the book into kind of full-blown fights with police, possession of crack, hitting a cop with a car.
When, in fact, it ended up being about the most vanilla, sort of minor misdemeanor drunk driving thing you could ever come across. And the importance of it is that it serves as kind of almost like a maypole around which a lot of other threads in the book revolve. The fear that he is going to go to prison for three years. These tense confrontations with his parents at a drug rehab center and finally the amazing outcome that he basically attributes to kind of almost a fix that is done on the case.
So it‘s kind of like, I think he needed to burnish what was kind of a run of the mill college boy‘s wrap sheet into this thing where he is bad. I‘m a bad guy. I was a bad guy. I was capital C criminal.
OLBERMANN: A couple of particulars here. How long was he in rehab as opposed to what it says in the book?
BASTONE: We didn‘t look at the rehab stuff. The prison time is what we looked at.
OLBERMANN: Right, the prison time.
BASTONE: He said he initially was looking at three years in an Ohio state facility and then magically the case somehow fell apart against him. But he did three months. We went to the sheriff. The sheriff checked the records. He never was in the facility. Basically it came down—and we confronted him.
He admitted he was in jail for a lot less time than three months and we said well, was it more like one or two days? He said yes, it was something along the lines of that. In reality, we think it was no more than five hours that he would have been in custody in a small Ohio police headquarters that didn‘t even have a secured holding facility, so he was like in a room until someone posted his bail.
OLBERMANN: And this moving story of the death of a girlfriend. I know it‘s a very intricate thing but that doesn‘t hold up to inspection, either?
BASTONE: No. He tells this very detailed story of the death of someone who he portrays as almost kind of his high school sweetheart who gets hit by a train at some point and he creates an entire alternate reality with what happened.
Actually what happened, placing himself in the midst of it. Not that he was driving the car or anything but that he helped facilitate this girl‘s—basically getting hit by the train and how the town turns on him after the fact and he becomes the bad guy, not the guy who drove the car and tried to get past the train. But he was the bad guy. Little Jimmy Frey took a licking for that.
OLBERMANN: Is this a scam? Or is this a man who is exaggerating to sell a book or are those actually one in the same thing?
BASTONE: I would say it‘s a twofer there. I think that he has admitted, you know, when the book came out he told The New York Observer that, you know, he pitched the book to 17 publishers who said no. He pitched it as a fictional work and then Doubleday said yes, but they wouldn‘t publish it as fiction. It came out as fiction.
The fact is, if you read these kind of melodramatic pulp fiction kind of tales from a guy who just made it up, the book—a, you are not going to get it published, and, b, if you get it published, if you sold one percent.
The importance as Oprah said was she kept looking at the back cover of the book because she wanted to make sure that the guy was still alive. And I guess looking at that author‘s photograph confirmed to her that, you know, this happened to someone. All these terrible things happened to James Frey and he made it through. You know it‘s like a redemption tale and that‘s why people have flocked to the book with her seal of approval.
Now i'm confused. There's alot of weird statements in there.
So the girl is real, her death is real, and Frey felt guilty for it. On a site sent to me by Ryan, it said that the girl commited suicide, but being hit by a train while in a car doesn't sound like that to me, so now there's two different stories that people are talking about. This train girl and that girl commiting suicide. It looks like alot of confusion, the only way to grasp what's happening is by reading the particular passages in question and then looking at what is being run through the mill.
DJ/ His motives are irrelevent? How it affected him is irrelevent? irrelevent to what? ...the book? how can the writer's motives and experiences that caused him to write the book be irrelevent to the book? Again, much confused. Please explain. Obviously if he's lying about about the girl even existing or having a relationship with her then there's cause for alarm, but it still looks like over dramatization to me. I think, from what I see in grumbler's quotes, is that he's saying that he and his girlfriend were playing chicken with a train, crashed, killing her, and causing the train to buckle; leave the tracks, and kill two highschool girls. The investigators say that the high school girls really did die in the train wreck, and they say this Lilly actually died from being hit by a train, apparently. So the facts still seem to be there except now nothing makes sense based on what i've previously heard.
I hear that it was proven he wasn't in any major trouble with the law, but everything else is speculation. The mother of one of the dead girls said "I didnt think he had anything to do with the train accident" OHH PROOF!!! A MOTHER SAID HE MIGHT NOT HAVE HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT! See, that doesn't work.
But either the girl slit her wrists, hung her self, or was hit by a train, or it's talking about seperate people. Waaaay to convoluted. More info is needed.
Has anyone actually quoted the parts of the book with the questionable material online for us to see?
Well, that about does it for me I guess.
I neither have nor have had any interest in this book what-so-ever.
You know what it is irrelevent to. It is irrelevent to the issue of whether or not he was decieving people.
Now then, if you have good reason to believe he did not in fact make up any details, and was just poetic about it, then there is good cause to consider it non-fiction.
However, he can't make up even the slightest detail without evidence before it crosses that line, the line between fiction and nonfiction.
It is true that a lot of people make up details, big and small, in "true" stories, but I hold them to the same standard.
I merely state that if he did in fact make up details, he should not have labelled the book nonfiction.
I will also admit all I know are the details I have heard on the news regarding this. However, I will say this. You can't quote the book itself as evidence of it's validity. That is, since I know exactly how I will be misunderstood, you can't say "this part is true because of what this part of the book says". That is the sort of self-referencing defense you can't use.
However, I will say this, it seems that if the guy actually admitted to it, and the news has exposed it, it is more likely to be true than not, and when it comes to truth values, all we can really get are probabilities of accuracy.
James frey offense doesnt compare too those millions and billions who still follow similiar fictional novels written by bronze age goat herders mad rabbis and cult making forgers of the 1st century earlier and later centuries! *Cough*Bible&koran*cough*.
People still murder kill ! Remain narrowed minded on issues are biggoted all because of those two books especially the later as of sept 9,11.
They all claim to be real , Except their not and they are not all 100% original either.
What did James Frey Do, Expose Oprah`s gaullibleness and also that of her idol worshiping book club.
Make lots of money $$$, Perhaps ruin his reputation and credibility somewhat in the future.
Dietrying Wrote:James frey offense doesnt compare too those millions and billions who still follow similiar fictional novels written by bronze age goat herders mad rabbis and cult making forgers of the 1st century earlier and later centuries! *Cough*Bible&koran*cough*.
People still murder kill ! Remain narrowed minded on issues are biggoted all because of those two books especially the later as of sept 9,11.
They all claim to be real , Except their not and they are not all 100% original either.
What did James Frey Do, Expose Oprah`s gaullibleness and also that of her idol worshiping book club.
Make lots of money $$$, Perhaps ruin his reputation and credibility somewhat in the future.
There's considerable differences.
The bible, underneath all of the supernatural rigamaroo, is essentially a book of ethics. The Ten Commandments, in particular, are mostly "Be good. Don't steal shit or kill people or treat your parents like crap or cheat on your wife or ruin your neighbor's reputation." A lot of people interpret things to suit their needs, but that's the fault of the people. The most you can fault the bible for is for being too vague. Evil people will still do evil things, and if they don't use the Bible as a tool to justify what they do, they'll always find something else. The books of the bible were written by simple people who didn't have anywhere near the knowledge or expertise that we do today. It was written to explain things that no one could explain. And it will persist forever because we'll never get to the point where we can explain everything. Obviously, judging by your tone, you're hardly an open-minded or accepting individual, nor are you very knowledgable. Or coherent.
Frey, on the other hand, wrote a book filled with information that was intentionally misleading or false, and he did so with the express intent of decieving his audience and making money, which he did. Oprah was a sucker for believing him, as was anyone who bought the story and took it at face value, but they are not responsible for the lies and deceit.
I would argue that the writers of the bible weren't to 'our level of expertise', but yeah it's definitely a series of books that reflect the nature of ethics and mankind. It also has been responsible for causing the most wars deaths, oppresive governments, etc And Die's comparison actually matches up pretty good, Frey was putting together a story that dealt with ethics of drugusers, the story of mankind at its weakest and strongest to overcome abuse. while the old testament is mostly true the new testament is confusingly vague and almost never matches up to history just frey's attemt to inspire is a collection of half truths and lies, but those lies are meant to stregthen the values of the story and make it simpler for people comprehend in terms of good and bad or emotionally uplifting, disheartening, etc.
the simple truth is, alot of writers do it and if smokinggun wouldn't have run the story frey's book might have helped alot of people, regardless of its lies winkwinkbible..
And if it was presented as a fictional exxageration of a true story, that would be fine, but he presented it as the truth. Are you suggesting that believing a lie is going to somehow help people deal with reality? Why can't they get whatever lesson the book has to teach if they realize parts of it are fictional?
The more impotant questions is, why was this thread bumped?
We're just going to get the same argument going again. For some reason lazy keeps insisting that the book was okay because of the message it was trying to convey, but what we've been saying as that would have been fine if Frey didn't tell people it was a true-to-life story.
Well, the key to a happy life is self deception so they HAD to think it was a true story in order to have the message affect them!
People are more willing to believe a "true-story" as opposed to fiction, yes. :D
Yes, we have established that already.
Moving on to what I actually was attempting to ask:
Does someone actually have to believe the story is true to get a message from it? Can they not realize that parts of it were exxagerated and/or false and still be inspired by the story? Titanic certainly moved a lot of people, even though it is made very clear that the two main characters are totally fictional constructs.
well like i said, people believe a true story and they'll listen to its morality. A sci-fi for example can accomplish the same thing but only in grande humanity. An episode of startrek that deals with beings that have sex constantly but never mix emotions with intercourse, a movie about an alien that visits earth as part of a police orginization to stop all planets from war (and if you dont stop, you're destroyed) and things of that nature are well recieved in science fiction but personal struggles of the metaphysical or 'real' people with real issues dont translate well to science fiction. Even when you hop over to other genres like romance or dramas you're still looking at entertainment. Wholly fabricated for your enjoyment.
no one watches Titanic and thinks about the morality or personal struggles, it's a movie. But show them a documenntary on 20/20 about north Korean life and its a totally different story; People will actually demand action, write to congress, get pissed and say 'why dont we do something?' and it sparks morality in people. I could release two versions of the same book from a true story, one about a man in a north Korean prison waiting to be executed and one about a Fuh on the artificial moon colony who is being Mind Danced until his execution which has the same exact story just told in different ways and one will be viewed as entertainment and one will be viewed as a heartfelt message from an atrocity.
And the only way I can see that little speech having anything to do with the current debate is if the moon colony story was presented as a "true story" vs being presented as fiction.
You are basically stating something that isn't even the topic of discussion. That book isn't a 20/20 documentary. It is a STORY being presented as absolutely true. Are you stating that the ends justifies the means, and if he had to lie but the fiction got people to change, it's worth it?
I am asking you this. Do you believe that the same story, the SAME story mind you, MUST be presented as truth if it is to have any impact? That, whatever lesson it has, it will be ignored if it is just presented as fiction, and it is worth it to lie so long as you change someone's way of thinking?
I present this. Such a mindset is stupid. It leads to all sorts of terrible things. Some people may honestly believe we the people must DO something about "the 9/11 conspiracy", that the government was responsible for it and that the only way to get people to act is to make up a fictional story, pass it on as the truth, and rationalize it in the sense of "well, it COULD have happened and likely did to someone else, and it's worth it if it gets people to take action". It is still a lie, born from another lie, and all that will result, if anyone changes the way they think because of it, is an action born out of ignorance. History shows such actions yield success far less often than an informed act.
...no it doesn't. :D
But you dont get it i'll try to explain, i was using extremes to make my point. But basically, if you tell someone it's a true story it's more amazing and people will read in to it more, apply their own thinking, life experiences in to the story and draw experience and education from the story. A good example of this would be Saving Private Ryan where fictional characters embark on a fictional mission inside a true event.
WW2 vets watched the move and said that the level of realism and the feeling of war is spot on, "It's as if the filmmakers traveled back in time and brought a camera with them". It sparked *massive* appeal in the WW2 vets who could finally look at a movie as a realistic depiction and not hollywood fodder. Within weeks of the film's release TV shows popped up discussing WW2 and using the movie to explain actual events in history. However, things of the character's nature, introspective looks in to their thinking, the dramatization of emotions etc are all inferred and while wholly truthful they are to tell the story and create a more emotional experience.
Saving Private Ryan is a fictional story but was grounded in real life enough to give peoplle the ability to draw from its experience, while tom hanks was not in WW2, his character was, they all were modeled after real people and the events, shoot outs, etc were crafted from first hand accounts and testimony, so we end up with a fictional story that is also a true one.
Frey's book falls in to this same catagory, while some things were embelished for puroses of drama the story is still true. because of that the book deserves a based on a true story title and if that title wasn't there it would not have created the impact it was designed to do.
Now as I said before, a good sci-fi can offer the same experience but usually not on a scale of personal struggle. if that book about fuh on the moon was released people would find it mildy entertaining. But tell them it's a re-telling of an actual Korean POW and suddenly interest will be ten fold.
I don't recall anyone ever claiming Private Ryan was a true story though.
He claimed that book was exactly accurate, and THAT is the issue at hand. It's not that the book may not have been good, it's that he should not have claimed it was completely accurate if it wasn't.
Round and round the merry-go-round... This is getting old.
Yes it is because you refuse to be realistic, do you actually believe that books that say 'based on a true story' are wholly accurate, i mean any of them? You cant possibly believe that. Stories have extremely important arcs, flow and paradigms to follow to make them interesting and entertaining. real life does not follow such things which is why in every case of a 'true story' it is still adjusted, paraphrased, iconically translated, narrated and has its time line of events chopped up etc in order for it to be a 'good book'. you've put your judgement on some kind of pedestle where you believe that any book that says it's a true story should be a time-lined account of the events and it simply isn't that way outside of cook books or stereo instructions and especially not in the entertainment world. The judgement you're passing on Frey's book cant even let books about 'How I live with AIDS' or 'Surviving 9/11' types of stories past your rediculous judgement that because the author makes it more dramatic to grab the heart of the reader it destroys the entire worth of the book and should be labled as fiction.
If you want to see an actual nonfiction book look at 'Why i hate Bill O'Riely' or '10 new fun things to do in Ohio', but for christ's sake and get off your high horse and think a little.