Diary

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My father's little brother who he was extremely close to drank himself to death when he was 31, a couple of years before I was born. Ten years ago my father gave me my uncle's "Book." It was more like a diary in outline form, a memoir, an autobiography. It had a profound effect on me because I recognized myself in it: the drinking, the inability to stop, the compulsion, the insecurity. I considered it to be some kind of guidance from this dead uncle. I think he died about 4 weeks after the last "entry."

I re-read it for the first time in a decade last night and it is heartbreaking. He begins as this optimistic, charming kid but it turns into this spiral of women, out of wedlock children, fights, cops, jail, depression, broken down doors, hospitals---I never knew a 1/2 Swede 1/2 Mic could have such drama...

The current running through it though is: blacked out, drank, resolved to stop, on the wagon, off the wagon, stopped, started again and on and on and on. I love this man I never met. By all accounts he was charming and handsome, intelligent (but intellectually lazy as the handsome and charming often are) and infuriating.

James Frey is an asshole, man.