James & Oprah & JT

Shannyn or JT?


Oprah Semple McPherson


James and Confused

I want to throw my 2 cents about James Frey into the ring. First off, I did not read his book. I find memoirs self-indulgent and boring and only like the ones with good masturbation fodder such as those by former male hustlers. (I also liked Sean Wilsey’s, at least the first half.) Overall, I find them to be the literary version of reality TV.

Anyway, I was reading the NY Times Book Review a couple of weeks ago and marveled to Dude about the success of “A Million Little Pieces” and launched into some diatribe on publishing and readers' appetites and Oprah Semple McPherson.

Lo and behold the following day there was a meaty little New York Times front page story about J.T. Leroy. The Leroy thing always smelled fishy and the drumbeats increased a few weeks ago with the New York Magazine piece but the Times nailed it. It’s a great story. It is like “Dressed to Kill” meets “SVU” but nobody dies. Wigs, hoodwinked celebs, EuroDisney, Asia Argento and a hottie who looks just like Shannyn Sossaman.

Now, this Shannyn look-a-like apparently received a call from a Times reporter and said something to the effect of “I can’t deal with this now” then hung up. I love that. She can’t deal with it. I-am-so-beautiful-and-an-artist-and-I-cannot-have-some-mortal-bothering-me. Shannyn look-a-like needs to know that if a reporter calls and you can’t deal with is you say “no comment” until you get your shit together. If you say “I can’t deal with it” you sound like an arrogant brat. But she got a break when Frey-Gate broke.

It must be a double-edged sword. You get so-so reviews and decent sales but then Oprah Semple McPherson comes a knocking and the world opens up for you. But then pesky investigative journalists start sniffing around…

But this isn’t really about James Frey, it’s about Oprah Semple McPherson. Nobody cared much about James Frey until Oprah Semple McPherson chose him. And I’m not surprised by her reaction because no matter how powerful and influential and wealthy Oprah Semple McPherson is, she is still an insecure mess who needs constant attention and praise and affirmation. Just watch her show for a week and you’ll pick up on it.

Perfect and Apropos Example:

Oprah's Book Club Part I: Reading is Fundamental. In an effort to get more American to read Oprah started her book club. All was dandy until The Franzen dared to say no to Oprah. He just wasn’t that into her. And what did she do? Forget it and move on? No. She freaked out. Freaked out. You don’t say no to Oprah Semple McPherson, especially when your RSVP has the whiff of snobbery. Poor Oprah. In so many ways she still feels like the poor ignorant little girl she once was. But come on, is it really a surprise that a writer of over praised literary fiction is a snob? But her ego couldn’t take it. So she folded the book club. Closed the shit down. So much for getting Americans to read. Let them read “O.”

Oprah's Book Club Part II: Dead Can’t Dance. Oprah brought her book club back but played it safe by only choosing classics (aka dead authors cannot hurt her.) John Steinbeck wouldn’t be dissing Oprah any time soon. But it didn’t work. The flock was unhappy: “I had to read that in high school and couldn’t even get through the Monarch notes” was heard more than once. The ratings were unhappy: shows filmed in the hometowns of dead authors weren’t crowd-pleasers. And the publishers and authors weren’t happy: No more brass ring to reach for. But then came the Frey. The Frey. The Frey. Oprah Semple McPherson was so moved by the Frey that…

Oprah's Book Club Part IIII: Return to Fiction Place. Everyone was happy. The flock, the publishers, the authors and especially Oprah Semple McPherson. Until the Smoking Gun…

So, James appears on Larry King and Larry is being harder on James than he usually is. He’s always so blasé and half-there that when he gets tough my arms get goose bumps. But James (who certainly sounds like he did a load of drugs in the past) isn’t budging and keeps relying on publishing speak/marketing BS:

Larry: But a memoir is synonymous with fact, isn’t it?

James: The format of memoir is still defining itself as it is relatively new genre yada yada.

So, Larry was a little tough and mean and James was a little monotonous and vague then Momma James came out and they took a bunch of calls from women who all sounded like they would be big bores at cocktail parties and if it wasn’t for James they would be writing mash notes to Scott Peterson in prison.

The name Oprah was invoked about 25 times and you just knew she was sitting home watching because Oprah loves to read and watch anything about her. She acts like it’s a lark but she positively studies The National Enquirer.

So my guess is Oprah had a few things going through her mind:

1) She couldn’t deal with another flakey Book Club scandal.

2) She couldn’t disappoint the thousands of people who had been helped by the book and thus call their epiphanies into question (like my little old aunt who found out years ago that the saint she had prayed to her whole life had been defrocked.)

3) She felt a little responsible— after all, if she hadn’t chosen him none of this would have happened because nobody would have cared.

4) She got a little Momma Bearish for James since Larry was a little mean and James was so “well, whatever Oprah Semple McPherson thinks is fine by me and I’ll accept it.”

So, she calls in and gets all Scott McClellan on us (to borrow from a Maureen Dowd op-ed piece—thanks Mo!) and says something like “the basic core of redemption resonates and has not been eroded by some factual inconsistencies."

Well, you could practically hear the publishing community opening up their windows and shouting “I’m happy as hell and I don’t have to wonder any more.” James, too, unclenched his jaw for the first time all night.

I have to tell you that I really don’t have a problem with James Frey and his artistic liberties. Dude disagrees: he thinks that like a witness who lies on the stand, Frey is tainted and you can’t believe anything. But I’m a bit more forgiving. For starters, it’s not journalism, it’s art. Different rules. Secondly, I know how damned difficult it is to get a first book published and when Nan Talese and Doubleday are in the driver’s seat, you let them to whatever they want to do. So my take is that when he was shopping it as a novel, it had a 90 day prison stay because it was much meatier than a 6 hour stay. Then he either forgot or just didn’t change because when you are about to get published for the first time, you can hardly believe it and don’t want to make any waves. Plus, you're goddamned sick of editing. But if it was me I would have had a little disclaimer in the beginning about embellishments...

Anyway, it's blowing over and all I wish is that we’d get some heavy duty coverage of JTL & Co...