Posted on 02/07/2006 2:10:59 AM PST by rhema
Cecilia Konchar Farr's perspective on James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" (column, Feb. 2) is thought-provoking. However, Farr is wrong to claim that what Frey does in his "memoir" is comparable to what any author does in telling a story. Yes, all stories "lie." But there are lies, and then there are lies.
When my daughter was young, and our family watched a movie together, she would ask, "Mommy, is this a true story?" My response, when we watched "It's a Wonderful Life," or "Mary Poppins" or "Casablanca," was to say, "Yes, Lizzy, this is a true story." Meaning what? Such stories are not literally true. But they do tell us something true about the human condition.
It is commonly believed that the philosopher Plato kicked the storytellers out of his ideal Republic, because poets lie, and lying leads citizens away from the real and the true. However, Plato did in fact retain the poets whose lies were "noble," meaning that in the context of their larger "lie," they told the truth. The truth of the human condition is that human beings betray each other, lie, cheat and kill. But doing so harms their souls, sometimes irrevocably. Poets whose stories acknowledged this reality were kept in the Republic, because their "lies" presented human life for what it was: an adventure guided by certain moral laws that, once violated, have real and serious consequences. It is this sort of truth that a student of mine, a child of divorce, had in mind when she cried in class one day that the film "Mrs. Doubtfire" lied. "It makes it seem as if the kids are fine if the parents are fine about their decision to divorce," she told me. "But that isn't true." Within the lie that any story is, there is an essential truth —or there is not.
In the case of memoir, which is what Frey purported his book to be, the rules are different. The reader knows that no author can remember every detail of his experience. We retell the stories of our lives, to ourselves and to others. We highlight and lowlight, add foreshadowing, a moral of the story. In the context of such selective retelling of our lives, we are bound by the same promise any storyteller implicitly makes to her readers: when it comes to the truth of the human condition, we will not lie. James Frey claimed, in his "memoir," that he recovered from alcoholism and drug addiction by sheer strength of character. He claimed he rejected everything his treatment center told him was necessary to recover, including the 12 Steps and an acknowledgement of a power higher than his own ego. He has now admitted his feats of strength existed only in his own imagination.
As a member of an extended Irish Catholic family (yes, a stereotype, but stereotypes usually contain a grain of truth) I am all too intimately acquainted with addiction and recovery. Millions of addicted people read Frey's memoir and took from it the message that they can get well without treatment, without the 12 Steps, without humility and help. They took Frey at his word that they could heal themselves through willpower, a willpower that Frey made up in his own life and passed off as true. Because of what he did, how many addicts will try to heal themselves, and instead get behind the wheel of a car while drunk, or break the hearts of their loved ones yet again, or die in a crack house or drowning in their own vomit?
Professor Farr is a professor of English, and as such she must know that words matter. The stories we tell, whether fiction or memoir, matter. Literally, those words are not true. But literal truth, as Plato saw nearly 2,500 years ago, is the least important kind in the realm of art. Plato would have booted James Frey out of his city, and rightly so — not because his story was literally untrue, but because it was philosophically untrue, and its lie is a lie that will damage, kill and break the hearts of real people.
Maloney is a professor of philosophy at the College of St. Catherine.
It's strange that this guy is getting hammered so hard when so many other books are also full of lies. Think about "Chariots of the Gods", Carlos Castaneda, and all those hundreds of psuedo-science books that made millions back in the 70's. Is Oprah the reason this man gets all the attention?
When I read in a descripiton of his book that it was a "collection of vivid memories of his life as an alcoholic and a drug addict" I knew it was all lies.
No alcoholic, including me, can remember vividly what they did under the influence.
Does anyone believe the doorstop called 'My Life'? I don't.
Oprah's the reason he sold all those books.
I suppose one would have to have read it to say. I didn't but the ramblings of Clinton would put me on the path to insanity so I stayed away.
Hear hear!
FMCDH(BITS)
Aw jeez, the old "emotional truth" BS. NO LIZZIE, THEY WERE NOT TRUE STORIES!
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