A Million Little Pieces: Amazon.ca: James Frey: Books

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News from Doubleday & Anchor Books

The controversy over James Frey's A Million Little Pieces has caused serious concern at Doubleday and Anchor Books. Recent interpretations of our previous statement notwithstanding, it is not the policy or stance of this company that it doesn’t matter whether a book sold as nonfiction is true. A nonfiction book should adhere to the facts as the author knows them.

It is, however, Doubleday and Anchor's policy to stand with our authors when accusations are initially leveled against their work, and we continue to believe this is right and proper. A publisher's relationship with an author is based to an extent on trust. Mr. Frey's repeated representations of the book's accuracy, throughout publication and promotion, assured us that everything in it was true to his recollections. When the Smoking Gun report appeared, our first response, given that we were still learning the facts of the matter, was to support our author. Since then, we have questioned him about the allegations and have sadly come to the realization that a number of facts have been altered and incidents embellished.

We bear a responsibility for what we publish, and apologize to the reading public for any unintentional confusion surrounding the publication of A Million Little Pieces.

Note: The following editorial reviews were written before the recent revelations by James Frey and the publisher.

Amazon.com
The electrifying opening of James Frey's debut memoir, A Million Little Pieces, smash-cuts to the then 23-year-old author on a Chicago-bound plane "covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood." Wanted by authorities in three states, without ID or any money, his face mangled and missing four front teeth, Frey is on a steep descent from a dark marathon of drug abuse. His stunned family checks him into a famed Minnesota drug treatment center where a doctor promises "he will be dead within a few days" if he starts to use again, and where Frey spends two agonizing months of detox confronting "The Fury" head on:

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.

One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack). His fellow patients include a damaged crack addict with whom Frey wades into an ill-fated relationship, a federal judge, a former championship boxer, and a mobster (who, upon his release, throws a hilarious surf-and-turf bacchanal, complete with pay-per-view boxing). In the book's epilogue, when Frey ticks off a terse update on everyone, you can almost hear the Jim Carroll Band's brutal survivor's lament "People Who Died" kicking in on the soundtrack of the inevitable film adaptation.

The rage-fueled memoir is kept in check by Frey's cool, minimalist style. Like his steady mantra, "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal," Frey's use of repetition takes on a crisp, lyrical quality which lends itself to the surreal experience. The book could have benefited from being a bit leaner. Nearly 400 pages is a long time to spend under Frey's influence, and the stylistic acrobatics (no quotation marks, random capitalization, left-aligned text, wild paragraph breaks) may seem too self-conscious for some readers, but beyond the literary fireworks lurks a fierce debut. --Brad Thomas Parsons

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

For as long as he can remember, Frey has had within him something that he calls "the Fury," a bottomless source of anger and rage that he has kept at bay since he was 10 by obliterating his consciousness with alcohol and drugs. When this memoir begins, the author is 23 and is wanted in three states. He has a raw hole in his cheek big enough to stick a finger through, he's missing four teeth, he's covered with spit blood and vomit, and without ID or any idea where the airplane he finds himself on is heading. It turns out his parents have sent him to a drug rehab center in Minnesota. From the start, Frey refuses to surrender his problem to a 12-step program or to victimize himself by calling his addictions a disease. He demands to be held fully accountable for the person he is and the person he may become. If Frey is a victim, he comes to realize, it's due to nothing but his own bad decisions. Wyman's reading of Frey's terse, raw prose is ideal. His unforgettable performance of Frey's anesthesia-free dental visit will be recalled by listeners with every future dentist appointment. His lump-in-the-throat contained intensity, wherein he neither sobs nor howls with rage but appears a breath away from both, gives listeners a palpable glimpse of the power of addiction and the struggle for recovery.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

The hard truth but with no answers. Sep 24 2005

By Tracy Stillman

Format:Paperback

This is an absorbing gritty novel that I found very hard to put down, but also found myself wondering about. The author lays the awful truth of drug addiction on the line, along with hard truth that the addict must face when going through detox, but there does not seem to be any conclusion beyond "this is what happened." I would like to know more about why, at least why the author thinks this happened to him. The book deserves the praise it is getting, it is well written, but it is kind of like watching a car wreck. You want to look away but can't, and then there are no answers.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

Still a good read, regardless of the level of truth Feb 23 2006

By Bobby Winthrop

In light of what has happened regarding Mr. Frey's two books, I feel the responsibility for fact checking is the responsibility of Doubleday and also of Oprah's staff. I feel that Mr. Frey got caught up in all that there is with having a best selling book. Yes, he should not have lied but his books needed to be classified in another category and again the responsibility of the publisher. This is not the first time that this has happened with publishing corporations. Mr. Frey was used as a scapgoat and publicly humiliated. I read Million Little Pieces and bought copies for several people and have just purchased My Friend Leonard. I will continue to read all the books that Mr. Frey writes, still, I can't imagine why people haven't figured out "what's going on" in the publishing world and places such as Hollywood. A good example is McCrae's book "katzenjammer" which tells exactly this sort of thing-what someone has to go through to get their book published and then what "they" do to it to sell it. Or the book "The Man who invented Rock Hudson" is another which shows the inside workings of the corporations and their lack of ethics, etc. I would recommend the following books to see how people really got where they are: "The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson" and McCrae's "Katzenjammer." And I would still recommmend AMLP whether or not you believe everything in it. Still a good book.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

Her Highness Oprah Feb 20 2006

By A Customer

I was extremely dissapointed in Oprah for her shameful treatment of the author. All authors make embelishments. She felt the need to embarass this man in front of the world, in order to distance herself from (silly) publicity. I think Oprah made herself look like Jerk. This took away from all the good that she does. She should have let it go. I read a review that said this book did what it was exactly supposed to do - give the reader a quiet afternoon with a page turner. !