James Frey Brouhaha

When I made a passing comment on a bibliophilist's reading list yesterday to allegations that James Frey's autobiography A Million Little Pieces was not authentic, I had not read the news story, because I have not read the book. Today however, after perusing the latest news on the story, I spent some time reading the thesmokinggun.com article, then googled it to see what others might be saying about it all. I landed on a kottke.org page that had a short article and a zillion comments. What really surprised me the most about the comments was that practically no one seemed to be saying that they thought James Frey had not made things up or embellished mightily - they did not care at all if it was out and out lies. The main theme in those comments was that if it helped someone then it didn't matter that it was fiction being passed off as fact. (Not to mention those who said good for James Frey for thinking it up and making a buck.) Wow.