Brain-Freyed
The other morning, I glanced at the cover of the Red Eye, our city's premier free magapaper, the number one reading material choice among morning commute El riders. Though I refuse to ever pick up the paper, it's never hard to steal glances of the larger print leads; copies are always dominoing their way around the red line car I occupy like a wave in the Wrigley bleachers. I never pass up the opportunity to look over shoulders and across seats. Before me today was a large picture of Oprah, chin caught in mid-quiver, looking more than a little chagrined. The headline read: "The O Strikes Back." It's pretty safe to assume that the story within was about the latest controversy, the big hullabaloo over James Frey's memoir "A Million Little Pieces." For those of you who haven't been following along, here's the short version: James Frey battles drugs, alcohol, and mediocrity, goes to rehab, ostensibly dries out, and writes memoir. Memoir generates little buzz until Oprah, or, more likely, Oprah's staffers choose book for Oprah's famous book club. The book club which can take obscure novels to the top of the bestseller lists overnight. One of the most reliable trends in book publishing. The only trend in book publishing, besides of course that there are no trends. Frey's book sells pretty well and then it is discovered that-gasp-he perhaps exaggerated some of the story, that though he did have a drug problem, he didn't serve time at Hazelden, the clinic, which though unnamed in the story, is considered by most to be the rehab at which Frey's story is based, that while Frey had been arrested, he hadn't been arrested as many times as he reports in the memoir, and a host of other claims of "fraud." I guess Frey went on Oprah the other day, either to apologize or to defend himself, or perhaps a combination of both. Maybe Oprah really let him have it, accused him of denigrating her club, hurting the feelings of many across the country. Maybe she secretly shared a laugh with Frey over the ridiculousness of the whole "controversy." The fact is, I don't know what transpired. Please forgive me if I'm leaving out some details, confusing one charge with another, or am guilty of some other specious reporting. I have only done the most cursory research here. I don't typically like reading about things that annoy me, so I have intentionally ignored most of this story. Many of my peers suffer from what they call "Brain-Frey." This so-called issue has taken up so much valuable time and energy that there is almost nothing left for anything else. With a brain mostly in tact, I have to say that I don't really get what the fight is all about. Do people think some narrative is "true," while other narrative is "false"? Do people really think it matters whether events relayed in fiction or literary non-fiction really "happened"? What does it mean when we say something "happened"? Does anybody know?
I suspect that we have reached the time where it would be wise to have a short refresher course in literary theory. If we only had some experts, and I'm not talking about Dr. Phil, we could get people to see that there is absolutely nothing wrong here, that we should shift our attention back to the really important debates. The topics that have become as trite as discussing the weather: Are you homophobic if you didn't like Brokeback Mountain? (I thought the movie was a huge disappointment, cinematically, and an even stronger underachiever in terms of storytelling, and I'm not afraid to admit it.) Will Brad see the error of his ways, leave that homewrecker, that hussy, Angelina, and her numerous natural and adopted children, and return to Jen, the cutest victim to grace the cover of US Weekly since we pulled baby Jessica out of the well almost 20 years ago?
Though not as glamorous as celebrity gossip, there's an essay, written by Roland Barthes, called "The Death of the Author," which I'd strongly recommend you check out. Don't worry if you haven't heard of the essay, or even of Roland Barthes. He has not been on Oprah. To my knowledge, he never had a drug problem that led him to be arrested numerous times and/or receive a DUI. He was a writer, a theorist, who, in the 60s, proclaimed that when analyzing literature, it was pretty much irrelevant what the author thought he or she was doing, what he or she wanted to accomplish. All that mattered was the text itself, what people who read it thought it meant. I've always believed this to be true, and was even more bolstered after first reading Barthes as a young theorist-in-training back in undergrad. When my own novel came out, which I have always considered a novel instead of a memoir, and I will shortly explain why that is, I quickly realized that I, as author, had little to do with the conversations that would follow. I remember many reviewers saying my writing was heavily influenced by Kerouac and Proust, both of whom I hadn't read at the time I was first drafting. Upon inspection, I can usually see what they're talking about. I always appreciate the compliments, wish I'd read more Proust, and maybe feel a little guilty for not fulfilling their expectations of me. People also said that my character had intimacy issues, was misogynistic, was living in a dream world, was sensitive, was insensitive, was a victim, was an aggressor. Rarely can I not find parts of the text to support any of these claims. Though I did not set out to achieve this "goal," to "make" the character either a misogynist or not a misogynist, the effect was there, but I am neither cause nor effect. People find what they're looking for regardless, and that's because they're the ones doing the reading. Though I had, I guess, in some way or another brought whatever it was they believed to be there to fruition, I was not responsible for it. I find this all very reassuring. Due to the fact that there is, seemingly, a lot of autobiographical content in the book, readers and reviewers alike ask questions about "how much of the book is true." You and the character both grew up in Chicago, they say. You both went to the same schools. You both wanted to go to graduate school. You both liked cheese fries. You both have sisters named Maya. The book must be about you. This is clearly autobiography. Why pretend it's fiction?
Though in the 80s, it was fashionably popular to write thinly-veiled autobiographical novels, that was not what I set out to do. I am not afraid to admit that, on occasion, I have had too many cocktails or that I have, on even rarer occasion, been on a bad date. I can tell people these embarrassing details of my life without compunction. My novel is a novel for reasons other than anonymity. My novel is novel because it has no other choice but to be. You see, if Barthes is right and the author is dead when the piece of writing comes into existence, the details of our lives that we draw from for the purposes of making art also cease to belong to us once we've imparted them to the characters, or to the painting, or to the mixed-media installation. All of life is a fiction anyway. It's all perspective. If you and I had dinner together, certain facts we could agree upon: what day of the week we went out, what restaurant we went to, the name of our waiter, what each of us ordered. Those details would be fairly incontrovertible. But, in all likelihood, we would have sat on different sides of a table, thus giving us completely different perspectives. You would have gotten to observe the first date behind me going horribly awry. I would have been able to see the trail of dust lining the framed print hanging above your head. I would have been privy to details that you would never even have known existed, and you would have had access to a million little pieces of information that were beyond my reach. This is how life works. We all see different things. Not to mention that who we are is just as important in determining what we see, how we process the information. We would both leave dinner sated, yes, but with entirely different accounts of what took place, all depending on a million little factors. This is why when I say that everything is true and nothing is true, that I think I'm right. So everything is untrue, in the sense that there is no one version of events. There just can't be. For every person, there's another account to be told. This is why there was not one but three Amy Fisher miniseries in the 1990s. This is why nobody can really dispute James Frey's account. This is why empiricism fails us when we try to apply it to literature.
Another thing you should know is that fiction doesn't mean untrue. EM Forester once said that fiction "allows us to understand character completely-in ways we could never understand people." Since memoir and autobiography is all perspective, and all an artificial construct (it's an illusion, like a movie, it's not really "happening," it's just well told and makes you believe that it is), as are stories and novels, it's all fiction. It has to be. It can't be a story about me, or about James Frey, or about Oprah, because it's a separate entity. It's an object all its own. I'm here, reading, right now, while thousands of copies of my book are all over the place, doing who knows what on their own, open to interpretation or misbehavior, without me to protect them. That's why a story about a character who looks kind of like me and does things kind of like things I've done can never be anything but a story about a character. I'm not there anymore. Maybe for a brief period of time our paths crossed, the character and I seemed almost identical, but we were always separate. The same analogy can be used for A Million Little Pieces. The element missing from the discussion, I think, is that James Frey's story has its own truth, is likely true in and of itself. If it didn't, I don't think anybody would have ever thought it compelling enough to publish in the first place, let alone to offer to Oprah's millions of book club participants, or any of ire and valuable Red Eye real estate it has been allotted. People are reading a story that gives them something to think about, something that makes them think and ask questions and feel and think some more, and I think that's all that book, or any book, seeks to accomplish. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I think we're all looking fro something a little less fleeting than Paris Hilton to think about, to discuss with friends. Though we're reluctant to admit it, we desire a modicum of substance in the mirage of images and hype that besets us on a daily basis. In my book, that's the only truth that matters.
I suspect that we have reached the time where it would be wise to have a short refresher course in literary theory. If we only had some experts, and I'm not talking about Dr. Phil, we could get people to see that there is absolutely nothing wrong here, that we should shift our attention back to the really important debates. The topics that have become as trite as discussing the weather: Are you homophobic if you didn't like Brokeback Mountain? (I thought the movie was a huge disappointment, cinematically, and an even stronger underachiever in terms of storytelling, and I'm not afraid to admit it.) Will Brad see the error of his ways, leave that homewrecker, that hussy, Angelina, and her numerous natural and adopted children, and return to Jen, the cutest victim to grace the cover of US Weekly since we pulled baby Jessica out of the well almost 20 years ago?
Though not as glamorous as celebrity gossip, there's an essay, written by Roland Barthes, called "The Death of the Author," which I'd strongly recommend you check out. Don't worry if you haven't heard of the essay, or even of Roland Barthes. He has not been on Oprah. To my knowledge, he never had a drug problem that led him to be arrested numerous times and/or receive a DUI. He was a writer, a theorist, who, in the 60s, proclaimed that when analyzing literature, it was pretty much irrelevant what the author thought he or she was doing, what he or she wanted to accomplish. All that mattered was the text itself, what people who read it thought it meant. I've always believed this to be true, and was even more bolstered after first reading Barthes as a young theorist-in-training back in undergrad. When my own novel came out, which I have always considered a novel instead of a memoir, and I will shortly explain why that is, I quickly realized that I, as author, had little to do with the conversations that would follow. I remember many reviewers saying my writing was heavily influenced by Kerouac and Proust, both of whom I hadn't read at the time I was first drafting. Upon inspection, I can usually see what they're talking about. I always appreciate the compliments, wish I'd read more Proust, and maybe feel a little guilty for not fulfilling their expectations of me. People also said that my character had intimacy issues, was misogynistic, was living in a dream world, was sensitive, was insensitive, was a victim, was an aggressor. Rarely can I not find parts of the text to support any of these claims. Though I did not set out to achieve this "goal," to "make" the character either a misogynist or not a misogynist, the effect was there, but I am neither cause nor effect. People find what they're looking for regardless, and that's because they're the ones doing the reading. Though I had, I guess, in some way or another brought whatever it was they believed to be there to fruition, I was not responsible for it. I find this all very reassuring. Due to the fact that there is, seemingly, a lot of autobiographical content in the book, readers and reviewers alike ask questions about "how much of the book is true." You and the character both grew up in Chicago, they say. You both went to the same schools. You both wanted to go to graduate school. You both liked cheese fries. You both have sisters named Maya. The book must be about you. This is clearly autobiography. Why pretend it's fiction?
Though in the 80s, it was fashionably popular to write thinly-veiled autobiographical novels, that was not what I set out to do. I am not afraid to admit that, on occasion, I have had too many cocktails or that I have, on even rarer occasion, been on a bad date. I can tell people these embarrassing details of my life without compunction. My novel is a novel for reasons other than anonymity. My novel is novel because it has no other choice but to be. You see, if Barthes is right and the author is dead when the piece of writing comes into existence, the details of our lives that we draw from for the purposes of making art also cease to belong to us once we've imparted them to the characters, or to the painting, or to the mixed-media installation. All of life is a fiction anyway. It's all perspective. If you and I had dinner together, certain facts we could agree upon: what day of the week we went out, what restaurant we went to, the name of our waiter, what each of us ordered. Those details would be fairly incontrovertible. But, in all likelihood, we would have sat on different sides of a table, thus giving us completely different perspectives. You would have gotten to observe the first date behind me going horribly awry. I would have been able to see the trail of dust lining the framed print hanging above your head. I would have been privy to details that you would never even have known existed, and you would have had access to a million little pieces of information that were beyond my reach. This is how life works. We all see different things. Not to mention that who we are is just as important in determining what we see, how we process the information. We would both leave dinner sated, yes, but with entirely different accounts of what took place, all depending on a million little factors. This is why when I say that everything is true and nothing is true, that I think I'm right. So everything is untrue, in the sense that there is no one version of events. There just can't be. For every person, there's another account to be told. This is why there was not one but three Amy Fisher miniseries in the 1990s. This is why nobody can really dispute James Frey's account. This is why empiricism fails us when we try to apply it to literature.
Another thing you should know is that fiction doesn't mean untrue. EM Forester once said that fiction "allows us to understand character completely-in ways we could never understand people." Since memoir and autobiography is all perspective, and all an artificial construct (it's an illusion, like a movie, it's not really "happening," it's just well told and makes you believe that it is), as are stories and novels, it's all fiction. It has to be. It can't be a story about me, or about James Frey, or about Oprah, because it's a separate entity. It's an object all its own. I'm here, reading, right now, while thousands of copies of my book are all over the place, doing who knows what on their own, open to interpretation or misbehavior, without me to protect them. That's why a story about a character who looks kind of like me and does things kind of like things I've done can never be anything but a story about a character. I'm not there anymore. Maybe for a brief period of time our paths crossed, the character and I seemed almost identical, but we were always separate. The same analogy can be used for A Million Little Pieces. The element missing from the discussion, I think, is that James Frey's story has its own truth, is likely true in and of itself. If it didn't, I don't think anybody would have ever thought it compelling enough to publish in the first place, let alone to offer to Oprah's millions of book club participants, or any of ire and valuable Red Eye real estate it has been allotted. People are reading a story that gives them something to think about, something that makes them think and ask questions and feel and think some more, and I think that's all that book, or any book, seeks to accomplish. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I think we're all looking fro something a little less fleeting than Paris Hilton to think about, to discuss with friends. Though we're reluctant to admit it, we desire a modicum of substance in the mirage of images and hype that besets us on a daily basis. In my book, that's the only truth that matters.