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James Frey
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books
Oprah BFF Forgives, Plugs James Frey
"James Frey might be a surprising choice, but I liked A Million Little Pieces." [Post]
"James Frey might be a surprising choice, but I liked A Million Little Pieces." [Post]
'James Frey' Arrested For Being Pervert
Not that James Frey. Some other guy named James Frey. Still: name curse? [NYP]
Not that James Frey. Some other guy named James Frey. Still: name curse? [NYP]
celebrity science
James Frey Rewards His Saviors
Fabricating memoirist James Frey earned a $1.5 million advance for his novel Bright Shiny Morning, and sales are strong. Now Frey is paying forward his riches from the book, and the money seems to be making a circle back toward the people who staged his comeback in the first place. Frey, the Post reported today, hired his wife's friend Davidson Goldin, former editorial director at MSNBC, to help with publicity on Bright Shiny Morning. Now flush, it would seem, with surplus cash, Goldin is starting a "media-strategy and branding consulting firm." And who did Frey steer to Goldin as a partner in this endeavor? Joe Dolce, the former Star magazine editor-in-chief famous for his poor management and communication skills. But there's a very relevant detail about Dolce and his relationship to Frey the Post omitted: More »
books
James Frey's Lies Are Bestsellers Again
Good news for fabricating memoirist James Frey and his once-embattled publisher: His first novel, Bright Shiny Morning, just debuted at number 9 on the Times bestseller list, with 14,000 copies sold. "We hear HarperCollins is pleased," reports the Observer's Leon Neyfakh. Among the many, many people not sharing the publisher's glee are certain proud citizens of Los Angeles, who have begun to notice false statements in the book about their city and its history. "New York reviewers adore the book because they think it nails L.A.," wrote LA Observed. But get this: It doesn't! The book is filled with awful, awful LIES! More »
books
James Frey on the Picket Line: A Short Scene
Now that James Frey is shilling his new novel, a screenwriter who walked the picket line during last fall's strike wrote in to share his experience with Frey, who "showed up to carry a sign and (I suspect) generally be seen. A female writer saw him and truly didn't recognize him at all. Here was the exchange that happened..." More »
That Explains It
James Frey on his writing style: "I also never really read my own writing, so I try to make it perfect the first time through." [WP]
James Frey on his writing style: "I also never really read my own writing, so I try to make it perfect the first time through." [WP]
Lying Hacks
James Frey Can't Fool Everyone
James Frey—the whining, lying-ass, horrible writer who was probably never seriously addicted to anything in his whole sad, pampered, no-talent life—may have duped The New York Times into giving his new novel a drooling rave. But he received much saner treatment from David L. Ulin at The Los Angeles Times. "'Bright Shiny Morning' is a terrible book. One of the worst I've ever read [...] Two and a half years after he was eviscerated by Oprah Winfrey for exaggerating many of the incidents in his now-discredited memoir 'A Million Little Pieces,' he's back with this book, which aims to be the big novel about Los Angeles, a panoramic look at the city that seeks to tell us who we are and how we live." More »
struggling writers
Professor Confesses To Lifetime Of Plagiarism
Kevin Kopelson's insanely complete confessional in the London Review of Books is probably going to destroy his academic career, but at least the University of Iowa English professor will have lent some (im)moral support to fellow plagiarists, from fake Harvard novelist Kaavya Viswanathan to Lonely Planet hack Thomas Kohnstamm to college students everywhere. Kopelson seems to take a certain glee in confessing his many acts of intellectual theft. They've been weighing him down for a while: Kopelson's plagiarism started in the fourth grade and continued through college, graduate school and beyond. More »
book tours
James Frey Challenges Writer's Block To A Fight
The James Frey Super Badass Killer book tour hit the Blender Theater this week, and the sleepy burg called New York is still reeling from the overpowering awesomeness. This tour, you'll recall, is not just some punk ass reading at Borders; no, it's a heavy metal-blasting punch of literary skill right in the face. Fiction writer Frey "walked through his adoring fans flanked by two huge body-builders," then read while hardcore Terry Richardson photos of guns flashed on a screen behind him. Someone asked Frey about writer's block. "Writer's block is for chumps," he replied. Step back, abstract psychological concept! At least Frey is bringing some energy to his book tour, as terrible as they usually are. But where was all that overpowering machismo when he was taping this Barnes & Noble promo earlier this week?: More »
books
Will James Frey Get a Second Act From the Media?
Doesn't anyone feel just the teensiest bit sorry for James Frey? Personal feelings about his writing and the fact that he interviews like Forrest Gump aside, during the current media blitz surrounding Bright Shiny Morning (the one he told Vanity Fair he wouldn't be doing!), the dude is practically hog-tied at every opportunity and forced to talk about his past sins. The constant rehashing makes for a really boring interview. How many times must a man be forced to apologize? Was F. Scott Fitzgerald right? Are there truly no second acts in American lives?
books
The NYT Loves James Frey's New Book
We haven't read it yet (somebody please send!), but the NYT has totally fallen in love with reformed lying-memoirst James Frey's Bright Shiny Morning, set in Los Angeles. Times critic Janet Maslin writes, "His publisher called it a dazzling tour de force. (Look, somebody had to, if only to create a comeback drama)... But that wasn't so far off the mark..." It's the "captivating urban kaleidoscope that, most recently, Charles Bock's 'Beautiful Children' was supposed to be." And what else? More »
From the Mailbag
"James Frey's Bright Shiny Morning is at #666 on Amazon. I just had to tell someone." [Amazon]
gawker book club
Here's the Part of James Frey's New Novel That's Based on Perez Hilton
James Frey's upcoming novel, Bright Shiny Morning, features interwoven narratives from the city of Los Angeles. One of his characters, a gay Cuban internet-based gossip, is based on—you guessed it, Perez Hilton! Aww. (Although, Frey does write that "between six and eight million people a day come to his website," which seems a little high.) Read the excerpt for trajectory of a young Perez Hilton. More »
struggling writers
James Frey Lies A Couple More Times, Because Who's Still Counting?
Disgraced fabricating memoirist James Frey is planning to redeem himself in two weeks with a new book, Bright Shiny Morning, clearly labeled as fiction. But there's some spadework to be done first, in terms of publicity and whatnot, and it seems Frey hasn't been too careful about, you know, "the truth" or whatever, in the run-up to his literary rebirth. He granted Vanity Fair an "exclusive" interview and got in return a "softball profile... which paints Mr. Frey as a wounded victim of market forces," in the words of the Observer's Leon Neyfakh. But it turns out Frey also talked to a UK trade publication called The Bookseller, which posted its interview to the Web just a few hours after Vanity Fair. Then there's Frey's worn claim that he first submitted his memoir A Million Little Pieces as a novel but was convinced to relabel it as a memoir. Pieces publisher Nan Talese was not pleased, to say the least, to hear that Frey has resumed saying this: More »
books
James Frey Didn't Even Want To Publish A Million Little Pieces as Nonfiction
James Frey is doing just one interview for his new novel, Bright Shiny Morning, and it's with Vanity Fair. Writer Evgenia Peretz tries to get to the bottom of what exactly happened with that whole fake-memoir scandal of his last book, which caused him to be ritually flensed on Oprah. "During the publishing process, Frey, it seems, still had some misgivings about putting the book out there as a memoir." Is there usually so much sturm und drang about putting out a memoir? If it's true it's a memoir and if not it's fiction, right? We're sort of tired of debating the mechanics of it at this point, but apparently it's just not that simple. More »
marketing
James Frey Is Trying Too Hard
If just buying James Frey's new novel isn't enough for you, you can purchase the "companion volume" called Wives, Wheels, and Weapons for just $150, hardcover. But it has a bunch of Terry Richardson photos of MILFs, gangsters, and rad cars. The three things that symbolize L.A.! I don't really understand the market for any of this. Particularly for Frey's heavy metal/ Hell's Angels book promotional tour, which gets a prize for Most Apparent Conscious Contrivance Of Coolness: More »
bringing down the house
