by Rebekah Aura Nemethy

Created on: August 12, 2009

When I read James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces there was already an apology letter from Frey to the reader explaining why he embellished certain events in a book that was originally portrayed as a memoir. I did enjoy the book in spite of the fact that many readers were very angry and felt like they had been lied to. I try to imagine myself as one of those earlier readers and I can honestly say that I don't think it would have bothered me to find out that it wasn't completely true.

On the back of the book a new genre is now printed in the top, left-hand corner: "memoir/literature." Many have begun to classify this kind of writing as creative memoir or creative nonfiction. In 2008 two more autobiographies, A Memoir of the Holocaust Years by Misha Defonseca and Love and Consequences by Margaret Seltzer, have been revealed as less than true. It seems like this sort of dilemma is becoming a trend in the writing world. If you ask me I don't see what all the fuss is about.

In Frey's defense he was a drug addict, and even while he was in recovery he was a very sick man. Although he did admit to consciously exaggerating some of the events in his life I think there are many writers who do it unconsciously. I consider myself a serious writer, my aspirations include writing novels but I've thought about writing a memoir before. I can tell you one thing for sure, I do carry around a tape recorder, just in case, but it's barely ever on. I take notes when inspiration strikes, but it strikes as often as lightning in the same spot. I have a journal, but if I write in it more that five times per month that's a lot in my busy life. If I sat down to write a memoir tomorrow I can guarantee that many things would be altered, just because I'm human and human memory is faulty. If I was lost in the haze of the various drugs Frey was using I'm sure my memory would be even less accurate.

On Larry King, Frey made a great point, "You know," he said, "the book is 432 pages long. The total page count of disputed events is eighteen, which is less than five percent of the total book. You know, that falls comfortably within the realm of what's appropriate for a memoir." Should there be limits set on the percentage of fiction a nonfiction book can have and how exactly can that be calculated for sure?

The only way those eighteen pages could be proven false was by checking out police records. There are no records of the dialogue that is written, even though Frey never uses quotation

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