A Million Little Pieces…of Crap

Posted on January 1st, 2006 in Books, Commentary by EngineerBoy

So one of my favorite web sites, The Smoking Gun, has dug into the story behind the supposed memoir by James Frey called “A Million Little Pieces”. According to their findings, many (if not most) of the key events depicted in his book either never happened or are wildly modified and exaggerated. Now, most memoirs contain certain dramatic license, usually of this type:

Retorting to cads in a pithier manner than real life
Embellishing the details of what went on behind closed doors
Endlessly deep wells of altruism
Rose-colored memories of one’s bucolic childhood and/or gut-wrenching remembrances of childhood abuse
Crazy exes
Rehab as a virtue and not the pathetic bottom rung of an egocentric, self-inflicted downward spiral
Invention of the ThighMaster
Etc

We, the reading public, expect a little fudging of the facts for better reading, because the truth is that we are all mostly

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