Does James Frey (whose first book, A Million Little Pieces, will be published in April by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) actually talk like this? Reading the interview in the New York Observer reminds me of the experiences I have had, usually at parties, where I meet someone so intent on impressing me, and also so intent on not seeming like he is trying to impress me (it’s always a He, sorry, boys), that the obviousness of the behavior is so embarrassing I don’t know how to handle it. The behavior BEGS to be addressed. And yet the social contract assumes that I have to sit there and listen and smile and nod. Like: how can he not understand how he comes across? Does he think I’m fooled? Does he think I’m an idiot? Vulnerability such as that is so painful to witness that it almost brings out a tender response. I feel strangely protective towards someone so clueless. Like: “Ouch … do you really want to show me that much at this early juncture in our non-existent relationship? Maybe hold back? Just a little?”
The lack of self-awareness, the lack of realizing what exactly it is that he is saying, how he comes across, is astonishing. Cringe-worthy.
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 fall 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 him. He exudes fragility but he THINKS he exudes Hemingway braggadocio. It’s “off.” And no, Frey doesn’t think it’s “bizarre.” He’s bragging.
It gets more obnoxious.
“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.”
Do you think using profanity is somehow new or shocking?
But more revealing: Your years of therapy and 12-stepping have not helped you see what you actually are doing. You are NOT at ALL “terrified” of what “they” are going to “do” to you now. You love every second of it. You are not Randle Patrick McMurphy. Calm down.
“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 is he talking about? He sounds like he is afraid of being perceived as gay. He’s protesting way too much.
So let’s go through that paragraph. Are you implying, sir, that your love for your dogs makes you unique? Even though dogs are so commonly referred to as “Man’s Best Friend” that there is no way in hell that you could have MISSED it. It’s not like loving a Gila monster. Now that would make you unique, maybe. Although: who cares? If you honestly and truly love a Gila monster, that’s interesting, and good for you. But if you crow your love for Gila monsters as a way to SHOW me how “different” you are … that’s just sad.
And what about NWA? I love NWA, too. I’m not sure why I would throw that fact around trying to make some point about it. Frey’s comment is a bit racist too: parroting his love of NWA as evidence that he is a “savage”. Additionally: Is he unaware of the fact that NWA are hugely successful platinum-album world-famous recording artists, which means, presumably, that millions of other people “like” them too? In other words: you are not a brave outlier, Jim.
Additionally: many MANY people think boxing is beautiful, including writers FAR superior to you, James Frey. A.J. Liebling. Hemingway. William Hazlitt was a boxing fan in the 1700s, dipshit. And you think you get shit for it NOW? (I highly doubt you get shit for it anyway. You’re just imagining things. Or, more likely: You wish you were getting MORE shit, because that would feed into your perception of yourself as a “savage” renegade-outsider.) Here’s an assignment, Mr. Frey: Go check out the responses from the “literati” of Hazlitt’s day to his essays about popular sport and boxing. Stop whining, baby-boy.
There’s something adolescent about how he lists his pig-like qualities. He presumes that his audience crooks their little fingers while taking delicate sips of tea on a green lawn in Connecticut somewhere. You can feel the mania, the adrenaline, at “shocking” people. He’s a teenage boy choosing to get a Mohawk or pierce his face to show how anti-establishment punk-rock he is, when the reality is that he is just trying to piss off his doting mother who still does his laundry. A true rebel doesn’t glance around for the nearest authority figure to see how “outraged” said authority figure is. A true rebel does his thing and doesn’t care.
James Frey cares. Oh my God, how he cares.
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 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.”
One response is: you are free to feel things like that, I won’t stop you, but don’t SAY IT OUT LOUD.
“I’ve seen you glance at this one” he says. It’s embarrassing. Because he so WANTS to talk about the tattoo. He is DYING to talk about the tattoo. So he makes up a reason to talk about it, and I cringe at his transparency.
Also (there is always an “also” with this guy): I have a tattoo too. Lots of people do for lots of reasons. Tattoos are no longer just for WWII sailors carousing through Tahiti on a weekend leave, or for convicts, or Hell’s Angels guys. You are not as “bad” as ANY of those old-school-tattoo-people. You are not inventing the wheel. The wheel has been rolling for decades now. Who exactly is he talking to? It’s like he believes his main audience is the Queen Mum.
Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is thinking, “Oooooohhhhhh that James Frey ….. he’s such a BADASS … he likes NWA, he likes boxing, he has tattoos, he’s so OUT THERE, so SCARY.” The only people who feel that way, probably, are those who are equally as insecure and equally as filled with homosexual panic as James Frey. The fact that I sense he NEEDS that kind of horrified through-my-lorgnette response from me makes me go cold as a glacier.
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 is transparently envious, yet you are also “honored by the comparison”.
Give me a raging asshole any day of the 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? Have you read a book? Like, ever?
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.”
First off: Adding “whatever-his-name” is not a cutting blow, since you so clearly and obviously know exactly what his name is. I think you care very very much what Eggers is doing, what David Foster Wallace is doing. You care a LOT. It does not surprise me that none of those men want to be friends with you. Not because they are members of the literati but because you are an unself-aware jerk.
Frey, you are not a bullet through the heart of anything.
You are a braggy bore.
