Back when James Frey’s first book came out, there was a fascinating interview with him in the NY Observer … sadly, the link doesn’t work anymore … but it pissed me off so much that I wrote a rant about it on my old blog when I was much angrier with much more frequency. Posted below. Just want everyone to know I called it. Oprah may have been duped, but I wasn’t.
Oh, and let me just say this before we begin: some of James Frey’s annoyances with today’s literary stars I share. Some of his frustration with the cleverness, and coyness is stuff I also share. I just don’t think, as he obviously does, that HE is the solution.
March 2003
I don’t think I’ve ever read an interview with a greater moron than this man. I do not even know where to begin.
Does James Frey (whose first book, A Million Little Pieces
Is his book any good?
Let me pick out some quotes from the Observer profile:
“The Eggers book pissed me off. [A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius] Because a book that I thought was mediocre was being hailed as the best book written by the best writer of my generation. F*** that. And f*** him and f*** anybody that says that. I don’t give a f*** what they think of me. I’m going to try to write the best book of my generation and I’m going to try to be the best writer. And maybe I’ll fall flat on my f***ing face, I’ll fall flat on my f***ing face trying to do it.”
You might fall flat on your face, but at least you’ll flat on your face while trying to fall flat on your face? Is your book as articulate as that?
The following quote shows Mr. Frey’s humility:
“[This one agent] went ballistic over [my manuscript], called and said, ‘We’re going to turn you into an industry.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘You know who Deepak Chopra is?’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ ‘You’re going to be the Deepak Chopra of recovery. We’re going to start a whole line of self-help books with your name on it. We’re going to publish your own version of the Tao. We’re going to send you out on speaking tours. We’re going to build a religion around you.’ I was like, ‘You must be f***ing kidding me!’ I very much admired the enthusiasm, but it was bizarre.”
There’s something off here. I don’t trust this guy. He’s got too much to prove. He exudes fragility … there’s something “off”.
It gets more obnoxious as the piece goes on, if that is possible. H
“I guess I’m the poster boy for unconventional addiction thought. They were trying to lead me into saying certain things. They kept trying to get me to swear. Stossel was like, ‘I heard you swear a lot. I heard you’re feisty. Why won’t you swear for me?’ Because my mom and my wife asked me not to. ‘Well forget about them, I need you to swear!’ So I was like, ‘O.K., f*** you!’ I’m terrified of what they’re going to do to me now. They’re going to cut me up.”
Dude, do you hear yourself? Your years of therapy and 12-stepping have not helped you see what you actually are doing. You are NOT terrified of what “they” are going to do to you now. You love it. You love being notorious, you love all the attention, you love being criticized, you love being the wild-card of the literature world … So just admit it! I find him to be extremely disingenuous. I realize I have never been in his presence, so I can’t say for sure, but what the hell. It’s my blog and I’ll judge if I want to.
The tone continues:
“My wife calls me a savage. Because I eat with my hands. Because my best friends are my dogs. And I like pit bulls. And N.W.A. And I love boxing. I think boxing is beautiful. The purity of fighting is a beautiful thing. Writers aren’t like that anymore.all these guys who have f***ing masters’ degrees and are so ‘sophisticated’ and ‘educated’ and … well, I’m not a guy with a master’s degree. I think I’m sophisticated. I can write big fat books. But I’m not an effete little guy.”
What a complete and utter jackass. I like NWA. I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about it, though. There’s something adolescent here, about how he lists what a pig he is … it’s like a teenage boy choosing to wear smelly socks … but he’s only doing it to thumb his nose at his mother. Like, you might THINK you’re being rebellious – but a TRUE rebel isn’t always glancing around at authority figures to see how “outraged” everyone is. A true rebel just does his thing and doesn’t care. James Frey cares. Oh my God, he cares. I don’t believe a word he’s saying.
While he was in L.A., Mr. Frey acquired a number of tattoos, his own personal footnotes. “I’ve seen you glance at this one,” he said, displaying a row of letters on the inside of his left wrist: S.P.C.D.H.C. “Simplicity, Patience, Compassion, Discipline, Honesty, Courage,” he said. “Words to live by. When I see that, it reminds me that these things embody the person I want to be.”
He pulled back his shirt to reveal others. “That’s a symbol of birth and rebirth,” he said, pointing to a small phoenix. “That is a Taoist symbol of life. I have my wife’s initials on my chest. I very deliberately scar myself so that I remember these things. However twisted my logic may be, by scarring myself, I’m making a commitment to myself. I’m committed to the things on my wrist.”
WHAT? What the hell are you talking about? “I very deliberately scar myself so that I remember these things.” (As opposed to “sort of deliberately scarring yourself”?) “By scarring myself, I’m making a commitment to myself. I’m committed to the things on my wrist.”
Euuuuuuuuuuuuuuu! I guess my feeling is: you can FEEL things like that, but don’t SAY IT OUT LOUD. You just sound ridiculous. I have a tattoo, bro. Lots of people do for lots of reasons. You are not inventing the wheel. People who think they are inventing the wheel by, rebelling, having sex, getting drunk – whatever – are immature. Besides. Lots of people have tattooes. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is thinking, “Oooooohhhhhh that James Frey ….. he’s such a BADASS … he likes NWA and he has tattooes!” And the fact that I sense he NEEDS that response from me makes me go even colder.
He’s not being real. If this was really who he was, fine – go for it. But it’s affected.
Then he trashes the literary stars of the day (Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace), always a good ploy right before your first book comes out:
“I think they’re full of bells and whistles and tricks and being cute and being ironic and being all this shit. To be honest, I don’t understand it. It’s not how I think or how I feel…Eggers and I are exactly the same age. If there’s a guy out there who is ‘The Guy’ of my generation, it’s Eggers. In that sense, I was honored by the comparison.”
Ah, now that sounds a bit like truth. You bitch and moan about Eggers, which seems transparently envious to me, yet you should be “honored by the comparison”. Phony. Nothing worse than a big fat phony.
Give me a raging asshole any day of the goddamn week, but spare me from the phonies.
“All that matters is what the feelings are and what the events are. It’s not about all this trickery. When I think about writing, I have a very simple formula: Where was I? Who was I with? What happened? And how did it make me feel? Those are the only important things. It doesn’t matter if I can write a sentence that’s a page long or if I have 30 pages of footnotes in the back or people chuckle at the introduction page. I want to move people and have them understand what I felt, what I went through and what I felt other people were feeling and going through.”
And … let me get this straight … you are the first person to write in this manner? You are the first writer to ever “want to move people and have them understand”? No other writer has ever done this before? Ever? You sure?
Lastly:
“I don’t give a f*** what Jonathan Safran whatever-his-name does or what David Foster Wallace does. I don’t give a f*** what any of these people do. I don’t hang out with them, I’m not friends with them, I’m not part of the literati. I think of myself as outside of this publishing culture. Kirkus called me pretentious. Am I pretentious in my self-regard because I’m serious about what I do? Because I’m moving against the trend of irony? I don’t know. I hope I’m a bullet in the heart of that bullshit.”
Frey, you are not a bullet through the heart of anything. You are a tiresome bore.
