James Frey, the Memoir, and Truth
By now, everyone in America has heard of James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces. If not, where have you been? He's the only thirtysomething memoirist that I know of who has recently appeared on both Oprah and Larry King, and if that won't make you a household name, I'm not sure what else will
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Her argument seems to be that the memoir no longer prizes authenticity because our culture has no respect for the objective truth anymore. She's right.
"In fact, Mr. Frey's embellishments and fabrications in many ways represent the logical if absurd culmination of several trends that have been percolating away for years. His distortions serve as an illustration of a depressing remark once made by the literary theorist Stanley Fish - that the death of objectivity 'relieves me of the obligation to be right'; it 'demands only that I be interesting.'"
Again, this is correct. It may be absurd to some people, but it's where weve been headed.
I guess I agree with most of what she's saying here; I just don't agree with her tone. Because I believe in this:
"By focusing on the "indeterminacy" of texts and the crucial role of the critic in imputing meaning, deconstructionists were purveying a fashionably nihilistic view of the world, suggesting that all meaning is relative, all truth elusive. And by focusing on the point of view of the historian (gender, class, race, ideology, etc.), radical feminists and multiculturalists were arguing that history is an adjunct of identity politics, that all statements about the past are expressions of power and that all truths are therefore political and contingent."
Personally, I think we're making progress.
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