The Blogosphere has been up in arms regarding James Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces. After the Smoking Gun report that questioned the authenticity of Frey's story, bloggers have been quick to denounce Frey's fraud (examples here, here, and here). Even media mogul and talk show host Oprah Winfrey has become heavily entangled in the Frey imbroglio.
This whole controversy has brought into the public eye a question I have been asking for some time: what is non-fiction and can such a thing truly exist? I have often said that all autobiography is inherently fictitious and all fiction is inherenty autobiographical. Certain authors have been acutely aware of this fact (see Audre Lorde's self-proclaimed "biomythography," Zami) and exploited it in a self-aware fashion. Others may silently acknowledge it without making a big to-do about it. Others might be blissfully unaware. Still others might publish "fictionalized" non-fiction ("based on a true story").
If one takes this above statement regarding the nature of autobiography and fiction literally, then I suppose Frey is off the hook. Taking a perfectly postmodern literary stance, it doesn't matter if the memoir is real or not. I, however, am not willing to take this stance. In order to get to the bottom of things, I suppose I ought to explain precisely what I mean when I make the aforementioned claim.
"All autobiography is inherently fictitious.". This is not to say that there can be no truth in autobiography. An autobiography can often be a very honest and intimate personal narrative. It is the last word there, however, that makes the key difference: "narrative." Once real events are translated into a narrative account, it is no longer real. Any recording of a real event is always (at least) one step removed from physical and temporal reality. Add in the fact that the author is apt to fudge a few details here and there - embellishing to add excitement or drama and censoring to remove certain unsavory or embarassing details - and the autobiography becomes even more removed. An autobiography is a person recording their life in the manner they would wish to be remembered. Even the negative aspects one might choose to include in his or her autobiography are still chosen. To argue that an autobiography is reality is false. The best we can argue is that an autobiography is a close literary representation of reality. Perhaps a closer one than literary fiction provides, but an approximate representaiton nevertheless.
Article comments
1 - Scott Butki
Good, well thought out piece, Bryan
2 - Aaman
Good stuff, Bryan, despite the miles of e-ink already spilt on this piece, this is very insightful.
Readers will take what they can from a book, irrespective of the Dewey classification - some of my best teachers have been mis-shelved books.
3 - jamie berger
more on the Frey fray:
http://memoirisnotfiction.blogspot.com
4 - Victor Lana
You bring up some great points, Bryan. I feel that Frey got caught in the Oprah machine. Had he not been so lauded by Ms. O, things probably wouldn't be so ugly now (especially since she turned on him). I can see her side too, her feeling of betrayal.
Hey, I'm a fiction writer, Oprah! Take my book and put it in your club. You'll have no problems with moi.
The point is that a good deal of fiction is autobiographical by necessity. I know mine is for the most part, with each character being some part of me (or someone I know). The main characters are always me, or mostly me, in various shades of gray. Still, it is fiction, and because of that we use the famous:
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons and situations is coincidental.
5 - David M. Brown
So, where does lying about how long one has spent in jail--reality, a few hours; claim, months; lie, admitted by Frey--fall on the fiction versus memoir scale?
That we might not remember an event perfectly, or that it has a different import to us than it has to another participant, is a far different issue from outright lying. The article seems to admit that Frey crossed a line, but it is too fuzzy about how we know he did, especially given the admittedly tentative claims about how all fiction is memoir and vice versa.
We're dealing with truism when we say that an author of fiction draws on his own experience (unless he has crafted something completely mechanical). But a work offered up as a truthful account is either an honest report or it ain't. Sure there can be errors, even if the author is honest and conscientious. But that's not the same as implying that no one can ever know the truth about his own past, so what real difference is there between memory and fabrication anyway?
Is a memoir that's half-memory/half-concoction a legitimate genre? Sure, why not? All the author has to do is make it plain, either by easy-to-read cues or by explicit announcement. Easy enough.
6 - Julie
Bryan, this is thoughtful. And I just finished the book. It is a great book. The pain is very real. It's a story about rehab. And this man was in prison - addiction prison. Who is to say they aren't the same thing to the author.
7 - Bryan McKay
Thank you for all your comments.
I have posted a brief addendum which may acknowledge a few points of contention.
In response to David M. Brown (whose dissenting commentary I appreciated thoroughly), I would like to argue that it is not the classifications that need to be changed, but rather the way we choose to think about those classifications. Does it really matter if the book is true or not if, as Julie says, the pain is still real?
I had intended to respond to Brown's points in full, but I foolishly closed the browser as I was composing my comment. The gist of my argument, however, was that memory and fabrication are essentially the same thing. Our brain may choose to fabricate memories that are exceptionally close to reality, and it may choose to fabricate memories that are completely unreal (schizophrenia, perhaps?). Either way, our memories are not reality, they are a subjective representation of it. We only remember things as we experience them.
Frey undoubtedly recording these events in a way unlike he remembered them, but even an autobiography, once written, is still an art object and cannot be held to the same scrutiny as a newspaper article. Again, we must alter our perception of art and not the freedom to create it. If this means reclassifying Frey's book as fiction, then so be it. He may have been intentionally misleading, but if anything, his controversy has been useful in getting people to think about the nature of fiction versus autobiography. Frey certainly doesn't get off the hook here, but he can at least be credited with opening this discourse to the public.
8 - Ray
The question about the blurry line between fiction and non-fiction (biography) is "intent." In Frey's case, he deliberately and intentionally made things up to mislead and misguide. If he only spent 3 hours in jail, but wrote that he spent 87 days and all that "crap" happened to him during those days, that's fiction.
I don't believe there's such a thing as absolute truth, at least not in biography. But we have to ask: Did the author deliberately lie to mislead? It's one thing if I don't remember what my mother said 30 years ago and have to fill in the blanks... as long as I get the gist of the conversation correctly. It's another if I said my mother was verbally abusive and she tortured me, blah blah blah when I knew none of that actually happened.
So the word "intent" is the key word. And only the author will know.
9 - Ray
Just to paraphrase a statement made by an editor (non-fiction) at a major publisher in New York:
"Once you make something up *intentionally*, it's no longer non-fiction. It's the author's integrity to make it known to the publisher."