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We’re sure everyone is tired of hearing about James Frey, but it looks like there’s one more seat open on the truthiness bandwagon and we’re going back eighty years to fill it.
Upton Sinclair, the original muckraker, is best known for his novel, The Jungle. The novel describes the horrific conditions of the Chicago Stockyards and raised public awareness enough for the government to pass the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.
Now Sinclair is the latest to be Frey’d over his novel, Boston, a fictional account of the criminal trials of Sacco and Vanzetti. Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with murdering two men and Sinclair believed they were innocent--victims of an unfair trial and government persecution. This past December, the LA Times reported that a letter had recently been found from Sinclair to his attorney. In the letter, Sinclair states that he had met with Fred Moore, defense attorney for the two men. “I begged him to tell me the full truth,” Sinclair wrote in the 1929 letter. Moore “then told me that the men were guilty, and he told me in every detail how he had framed a set of alibis for them.”
It didn’t take long before some journalists were questioning Sinclair’s character and his responsibility to tell the “whole” truth. However, they would have been better served to read the entire letter and not just the quotes in the Times. Sinclair continues, "I realized certain facts about Fred Moore. I had heard that he was using drugs. I knew that he had parted from the defense committee after the bitterest of quarrels. … Moore admitted to me that the men themselves, had never admitted their guilt to him; and I began to wonder whether his present attitude and conclusions might not be the result of his brooding on his wrongs."
We may never know if Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty or innocent, but it won’t surprise us if there’s an “Authors Note” in the next printing of Boston.
Thanks, Margaret!
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Hmmm....has "novel" acquired a new meaning or is it still used to describe a work of fiction?
what Jim said. So, so confused...
Here is one main rule I find useful: Good writing is good writing. (Just like good music is good music, etc.)
That said, people who try to sell fiction as nonfiction-I consider this an act of fraud, and a breach of trust with the reader--should have their toenails pulled out by a drunken frat boy with nothing better to do.
I'm too much of an elitist snob to read an Oprah-approved book (well, I've read a few of them, but before she selected them, damnit), but it seems this Frey guy is a wonderful writer in any case, just a guy who took part in fraud (along with the publisher).
This whole Frey thing made me think of Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction. I read these books back when I was a cool college student and dinosaurs roamed the earth. I thought they were so cool and so modern-day-Salinger, etc. Now I don't really think all that much of them. But the Frey story made me think of them because they're what I'd call imbellished memoirs. When you're reading them you know that Sean Bateman is really Ellis, and at least half the wacky stuff he is describing happened. Otherwise, would so many people have read them? People like to read into real human beings' lives, especially if they have a crazy story to tell, like death-defying drug abuse or coked-up Bennington students screwing one another. Bret Easton Ellis called his first two books novels and got them published as novels. James Frey didn't. Frey goes on Oprah and apologizes to the masses. I say, ah, who cares. A book like In Cold Blood is much more worthy of all this energy.
Even fiction is based on something. Stories aren't written in some kind of experience vaccum. I'm sure Ellis used some of his experiences and people he knew as fodder like every author does. How would that make it a memoir?
As far as this thing goes, yeah, it's dishonest to say its a memoir when it isn't. But if you like reading it, who the hell cares? Is every autobiography now going to be held to some special standard? I just got done reading Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman. Don't tell me that dude didn't embellish his 'memoir' like crazy. Does that make me not enjoy the book or feel cheated? No, I could care less. It's like having your grandpa tell you one of his stories that you love to hear and then telling him you enjoyed it but he's now a bad person because he exaggerated it.
Why do you keep bringing up Jim Frey, didn't he get fired by the Cubs in the late 80's early 90's?