"I have the road map to crazy," Albert tells him (no shit!), but the story and details mostly aren't anything new. (Weird factoid: Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins was one of the first people to know the truth!). Albert has frequently—though not always succinctly or in any discernible order—told her woes: financial, mental, legal—to the press since her outing last year.

She's crazier than two multiple-personality peas in a pod, obviously (not that we're judging!): "Phoning suicide hot lines and talking in the voices of teenage boys was a compulsion for her."

About her alliance with her former boyfriend's half sister, Savannah, who played the public face of "JT" for years:

Savannah walked the red carpet at Cannes behind Angelina Jolie. The two friends giggled like teenage girls, picked at each other's food, finished each other's sentences, even slept in the same bed and showered together—not in a sexual way, but out of the closeness of their entwinement. "We felt we were a trinity," Albert says. "We were creating a third. It was like we fell in love with each other."

How badly we all want to believe! In something.

In 1999, after hearing a colleague describe how she had once shared a pair of pants with friends, Ms. Brashares began working on a book about four teenage girlfriends who spend their summers apart, but stay in touch in part by taking turns wearing the same magical jeans, which somehow fit each of their bodies.

Alloy also has a reputation among writers for not always sharing its successes with the underlings who contributed to them. A case in point, often repeated as a cautionary tale among Y.A. authors, is the story behind one of the book packager's most lucrative hits, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The Traveling Pants idea originated with a woman named Jodi Anderson, who was then an editor at Alloy. Ms. Anderson proposed the concept (a group of girlfriends who share a pair of jeans), which was based on some of her own college experiences. She wrote a proposal sketching out the idea that was sold to a publisher, and was under the impression that she might then get to write the book(s). The concept was also sent to non-Alloy Y.A. writers, according to one writer who was approached, who were invited to write samples for the book. The writer said that she wasn't paid for what she submitted and wasn't contacted again or given feedback by the company. Ms. Anderson also wrote a sample. In the meantime, Ann Brashares, who was then co-president of Alloy with Les Morgenstein, decided to write the book.

Art Above And Below, With Life in the Middle [NYT]
Viswanathan-athon: Plagiarizing Writer Fell in Weird Alloy [NYO]

LA: What's really funny is: you can have these people talking smack about it, you know, "She's this and that." But the fact is, it's the Paris Review. If there wasn't some value to my work, which, you know, that's the thing that has been questioned...
[Interviewer]: Right. That's true. And If you get the cover of Vanity Fair, that's questionable. It could be about the gossip.
LA: Well, it means you've got nice tits. Wait a minute, no — I have nice tits, I could do that.

Author/Trickster "JT Leroy" [10ZenMonkeys]

Dylan and Maddie
They can see the glow a hundred miles away it's night and they're on an empty desert highway. They've been driving for two days. They grew up in a small town in Ohio they have known each other their entire lives, they have always been together in some way, even when they were too young to know what it was or what it meant, they were together. They're nineteen now. They left when he came to pick her up for the movies, they went to the movies every Friday night. She liked romantic comedies and he liked action films
sometimes they saw cartoons. They started the weekly outing when they were fourteen. [ . . . ] He picked her up and carried her to his truck, a reliable old American pick-up with a mattress in the back

Dylan and Maddie [Big Jim]
Jack and Diane [LyricsFreak]
Earlier: James Frey Might Want To Go Back To Just Making Things Up

Google Book Search: A Plagiarist's Nightmare [Slate]

Hmm, from what possible recent scandal does that name ring a bell?

Because they had never applied to an American educational institution, they hired Katherine Cohen, founder of IvyWise, a private counseling service, and author of "Rock Hard Apps: How to Write the Killer College Application." At the time IvyWise charged $10,000 to $20,000 for two years of college preparation services, spread over a student's junior and senior years. But they did have limits. "I don't think she did our platinum package, which is now over $30,000," Ms. Cohen said of Ms. Viswanathan. Ms. Cohen helped open doors other than Harvard's. After reading some of Ms. Viswanathan's writing (she had completed a several-hundred-page novel about Irish history while in high school, naturally), Ms. Cohen put her in touch with the William Morris Agency, which represents Ms. Cohen. Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, who is now Ms. Viswanathan's agent, sold the novel that eventually became "Opal" to Little, Brown on the basis of four chapters and an outline as part of a two-book deal.

The Swarm of the College Super-Applicants [NYMag]
Kaavya Viswanathan's Chick-Lit Novel: How To Get into College By Really, Really Trying [NYT]
Earlier: Gawker's coverage of Kaavya Viswanathan

"We made eye contact with Frey, who couldn't decide whether he should look proud or ashamed at being recognized. If my friend hadn't pointed out who it was, I would've sworn it was the guy from the Men's Wearhouse commercials."

Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of Kaavya Viswanathan

Crimson Cartoonist's Work Bears Similarity to Others' [Harvard Crimson]

On September 4, 1781, a group of 46 men, women and children who called themselves the Pobladores established a settlement in what is now the City of Los Angeles. They named it El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. Two-thirds of the settlers were African, of African descent or mulatto.

Okay, it doesn't exactly grab us by the balls and leave us gasping for more, but it's sharp and informational. This is, of course, James Frey, though, so we thought we'd trust but verify. How does Wikipedia describe the founding of Los Angeles?

The Mission Nuestra Se ora Reina de los Angeles was established on September 4, 1781 by a group of 46 Spanish and Mexican settlers from Sonora who had set out from the San Gabriel mission to establish a settlement along the banks of the Porci ncula River. These settlers were of African, Indian, and Spanish ancestry of which two-thirds were mulatto.

Well, you've got to applaud the commitment to accuracy, at least.

First Paragraph of New Book [Big Jim Industries]
Los Angeles [Wikipedia]

Earlier: Gawker's coverage of James Frey

Nick Sylvester's Harvard Lecture: This Clip Will Crash Your Computer And Crush Your Soul [Idolator]

EXCLUSIVE: She's Baaaaack! Kaavya's First Post-Plagiarism Writing [IvyGate]

I'm looking for a research assistant to help me with a book about Internet culture that I'm writing for Doubleday, which is due to be finished by the end of next March. My name is Lee Siegel, and I'm a senior editor at the New Republic, and the author of "Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination," a collection of essays that has just been published.

I would prefer a graduate student. Salary is to be decided with the person I hire.

Anyone who is interested can respond to me at this email address : [address redacted]

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Lee Siegel

The Triumphant Return of Lee Siegel [Eschaton]

During his first visit with Oprah Winfrey, author James Frey signed books for members of the talk show host's studio audience. As reflected in his inscription, love was in the Chicago air that 2005 day. Of course, a few months later the duo's relationship famously cooled when the A Million Little Pieces author was revealed to be a sniveling little liar.

Just imagine how many similarly autographed pieces of irony are floating around used bookstores.

The Dog Dialed 911 [Amazon]
Earlier: Gawker's Coverage of James Frey

Since the Smoking Gun report, it has been, he says slowly, a "very surreal six months, very strange. Sometimes terrible, slightly overwhelming. It's been like living in a Camus book, or a Kafka book, or something."

Frey means: I am familiar with obvious classics. Also, I'm a murderous cockroach.

"We had reporters camped out at the front and back entrances of our building," he says. "For a while I couldn't leave the apartment at all. And then when I could leave I left with a bodyguard and got directly into a black SUV."

Frey means: I relate to Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

"You never expect anything like that to happen," he says. "I'm a writer. I never expected to be recognised on the street. I never expected to get that kind of coverage, good or bad. I never expected to sell as many books as I have. And it was just overwhelming."

Frey means: I am but a simple man. I want simple things: millions of dollars and the privacy in which I might enjoy the trappings of my wealth.

"Never had anybody say anything negative to me, ever," he says. "No. Most people just say they loved the books, or it helped them, or someone they knew."

Frey means: I used to be a contender.

"I actually went and started seeing a shrink before the controversy erupted," he says. "I just [felt] uncomfortable. It's weird when you become a transparent person. I don't do what I do to be famous."

Frey means: I pay $250 for 45 minutes of affirmation so that I might tell you, with conviction, that I dislike fame.

"I never got into it to sell 25 books, and get written up in the local paper," he says. "I wanted to be a writer that had an impact. I wanted, and still I say the same thing, I want to write books that change people's lives, change how we think and live and read and write. I wanna write books that are read in 50 or 100 years."

Frey means: I can sleep easy knowing that I have still achieved this goal. Notoriety will suffice.

"I think writers and artists in general come in two forms: there are thinkers, and feelers. And I think those guys are thinkers, their work is about the intellect. The intellectual gamesmanship, it was all about irony and postmodernism and it was very clever. And none of those things were things I care about. I care about what I feel and how I feel it. So I actually set out to do absolutely the opposite. Strip everything away. Make it not about intellectualism at all, make it about emotional heart. It's like they were making conceptual art, and I'm making expressionistic art."

Frey means: I am not clever.

"Before I started, I read a lot of the authors who had achieved what I wanted to achieve, tried to figure out what they had in common," he says. "The most obvious thing all of them had was when they were published, nobody had ever seen anything like what they were doing, in terms of how they did it and what they said." He hauls out the blueprints: "I mean like Baudelaire, Celine, Henry Miller, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Kerouac." The names are growled, like those of old drinking partners. "You know, I'm an American male and I looked to that tradition for guidance, and I hope someday to be included among that group of American writers."

Frey means: I really just refuse to accept the reality of the situation, you know?

I just started trying to figure out how to write [something] which was unlike anything anybody had ever seen, and once I felt like I had figured that out I tried to figure out what kind of book I could write that would be unlike anything anybody had ever seen. When I started writing A Million Little Pieces I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going."

Frey means: The book was so original, it was a complete work of imagination.

"We live in a fast world," he says. "Much faster than has ever been before. So to write something that was very relevant to our time I wanted to write something that was very fast, that kept a reader moving. Cos that's what they expect in our world today, with the music and the film and the telephones and the internet. That's just how our brains function." He says he would rather his writing read like spoken language, "So I talk everything out. I talk my sentences through, and when they sound right I write them."

Frey means: I am very annoying to live with.

"People asked me, 'How much of it's true, how much of it's not true?' " he says. "Initially I said, 'I want it to be published as a novel so I don't have to get into all that. I don't wanna have to go through picking it apart, talking about what was changed and why.' Things were changed for all sorts of reasons: effect, for respect, other people's anonymity, making the story function properly."

Frey means: Not my fault!

"Y'know, those guys wrote books about their lives and published them as fiction. I mean the idea that The Sun Also Rises is not about Hemingway's life, or On the Road is not about Kerouac's life, or anything ever written by Bukowski or Celine or Henry Miller is not about those men's lives is a ridiculous idea. I think if a lot of those guys were writing now they'd be published as memoirs."

Frey means: If you're angry at me, you might as well be angry with these literary icons, as I am just as talented as they are.

"What's interesting is that On the Road was going to be published as non-fiction, and they altered it cos they were worried about legal ramifications," Frey says of Kerouac's largely autobiographical work of 1957. "And because at the time fiction was much more popular than non-fiction. For me it was almost the opposite, y'know - non-fiction is much more popular now."

Frey means: I spend a lot of time rationalizing things.

"So the idea that nobody at the publishing company knew it was a manipulated manuscript is an absurd idea," he says. "I remember somebody at the publishing company told me that if the book's 85% true there's no problem. Certainly that standard wasn't then applied to it later."

Frey means: Not my fault!

"I think a lot of it had to do with what was happening and is still happening in our country, y'know?" he says. "People feel frustrated by a lot of distortions by politicians, by members of the media, by movie stars, by tabloid journalists, and it was like a sorta confluence of events that I happened to be in the middle of."

Frey means: Actually, this whole mess is YOUR fault.

Frey read the Smoking Gun report at the same time as everyone else. "I was sorta shocked by it," he says. "And I was upset by it and surprised by it. Just surprised that the book would be put under that much scrutiny, and picked apart so thoroughly. Throughout this I've been surprised by the venom with which people have come after me."

Frey means: Who knew? The internet! That shit's amazing.

"Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard," he says. "Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature. I thought in doing that it was OK to take certain licences." All storytellers, he argues, are embellishers. "To tell a story effectively you manipulate information ... I think that if stories were told always exactly as they really happened most of them would be really boring."

Frey means: I did what I did to make you happy. Can't you understand that?

"I mean it's interesting," he says, "the Europeans as a whole reacted very, very differently to the controversy than the Americans did, and the European media looked at it very, very differently from the American media."

Frey means: Oprah ain't got shit across the Atlantic.

"My agent just called me and said she couldn't work with me any more because she felt her integrity was being questioned," he says, and frowns a little. "My publisher called and said they were cancelling my new contract simply because they didn't want to honour it." The most curious thing, he says, was that despite the scandal they had made, were continuing to make, an enormous sum of money out of James Frey. "I mean, that's sort of the irony, y'know? My agent said her integrity was questioned, but it wasn't questioned enough for her to stop taking the money."

Frey means: Kassie Evashevski's a whore.

Does he, one wonders, regret any of it? "Well, I think that, doing it over, I would probably do certain things differently," he says. "I would be more clear up front about the fact that it was a manipulated text, that it was a text that was not a work of non-fiction." His expression is unreadable. "I generally try not to go through life regretting things, or playing the what-if game. Whatever I have said I have said, whatever I have done, I have done."

Frey means: Except, you know, the stuff I said I'd done that I'd not actually done.

The Man Who Rewrote His Life [Guardian]

And appearing in a full-length Q&A in the Times magazine? Presumably the artist's Brown, i.e., not as difficult to get in to, and, if you've any sense of self-awareness, something you feel fairly embarrassed about afterward.

Bye-Bye Blogger [NYT]

We can report with confidence that this photo is in fact Bad Lee Siegel.

Mr. & Mrs. Frey at Fashion Week [Daily Transom]