Comments on: This is Goodbye

By: Peter L. Winkler

Peter L. Winkler — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 23:33:44 +0000

The amount of oxygen burned up over James Frey’s million little lies and Oprah’s reactions to him is great proof that Americans are the most over privileged people on Earth. If this is our biggest problem, then we don’t seem to have many serious ones left to worry about. From my own sampling of the media coverage, it seems that far more attention was given this week to Oprah and Frey than to King George’s continued dissembling about his incremental progress in chippping away at the Bill of Rights’ limitations on governmental power.
Polls say that he’s succeeding. More people than not approve of his illegal wiretaps and agree that anything done in the name of the phony war on terror is justified.
Naysayers should start assembling a little hobo kit for the day when the political concentration camps open their gates. Perhaps they will have TV there so that we can continue to watch Anderson Cooper, Larry King, and, of course, Oprah to continue to be apprised about what’s really important.
Can we all stop talking about Frey now?
The subject isn’t really that deep and it has been exhausted.
Let’s move on.

By: Other Scott

Other Scott — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 19:23:26 +0000

Yep, exactly, you’d have to change what the genre represents and that seems fairly pointless. Memoirs are always glamorized recollections in one way or another and at least people (should) know what to expect.
This may get lost in all the “horror of the lies” business however.
That said, Nan Talese sure bugs. She should just explain exactly what you’re describing rather than coming back with “it rang true to me, I once had a root canal without novocaine.”
As with most things, I’m sure it just comes comes down to money since supposedly Frey orginally pitched it as a work of fiction. Doubleday must’ve just figured they’d sell more copies of the thing marketing it as a memoir.

By: Kit Stolz

Kit Stolz — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 23:57:13 +0000

Maybe Oprah is acting to save her brand, but whatever her motivation, she deserves credit for bringing a murky and often pretentious literary debate into a clean, well-lighted room and exposing the arguments to public view.
The result? The public has turned angrily on Frey, and scoffed at the publisher Talese’s position.
The idea that the book was the memoirist’s memory of what happened–essentially, this is his truth–has fallen flat and doesn’t look likely to get back up.
Will memoir writers now be judged by the same standards for fact as are biographers? If so, big trouble for the memoir genre, because for years now, in grad school and out, writers have been told that the exact details, the dialogue, etc., isn’t all that important. Besides, publishers don’t really care.
But if we see a lot fewer memoirs, that’s fine with me. I’m happy to go back to fiction. If I want to hear a lot of b.s. stories, all I have to do is go down to the local bar…

By: msc

msc — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 12:11:54 +0000

It’s not Oprah or Frey it’s the genre. The “I was a fuck-up read my lame bio” concept should be rejected wholesle by the reading public. Explore authors who write not those whose only claim is to have screwed up.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 09:47:54 +0000

Oh please. Say Scott, isn’t it time you picked yourself some harder targets?

By: Other Scott

Other Scott — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 03:49:26 +0000

Yea, way to go. Way to cover your ass, Oprah.
Did that show have anything to do with anything other than making Oprah feel better about herself?
(and, oh yeah, making her and her book club look like the victim here…)
Hell, I was duped…