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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Literary bad boy James Frey says Dave Eggers can eat his dust. His self-promotion is tiresome, but his addiction memoir, "A Million Little Pieces," shows he has the right stuff.
Apr 19, 2003 | Should celebrity be classified as a controlled substance? Consider first the available medical literature: rambling and confused statements, delusional behavior, outbursts of megalomania, and in the case of People magazine's Steven Cojocaru, unflattering shags -- all triggered by the sudden and confounding infusion of quasi-fame. The blazingly dysfunctional path of today's insta-celebrities is not something children should be exposed to or, come to think of it, most adults. Enough fooling around, then. Bring on the PSA campaign.
And for campaign spokesman, please consider James Frey, the rising author who has, in effect, done the thing he swore never to do: He has traded in one addiction for another. That is, he has written a ballsy, bone-deep memoir about coming off drugs -- titled "A Million Little Pieces" -- which he is now promoting with such hopped-up, synthetically fueled mania that reading his interviews becomes a form of retox.
"A Million Little Pieces" has all the hallmarks of a Publishing Event. An eye-grabbing cover: the Buñuellian image of a human hand sheathed in micro-pills. A movie-ready subject: the near-death spiral and phoenixlike rebirth of a rich suburban kid. (Boy, Interrupted.) A string of high-profile blurbers: Pat Conroy, Bret Easton Ellis, Gus Van Sant. And, most telling of all, a publicity Anschluss, engineered by Random House's genteel Nan Talese imprint.
The big noise began with a now-famous New York Observer interview, two full months before the book's release, in which the 33-year-old Frey wasted no time sawing off the legs of his rivals. "I don't give a fuck what Jonathan Safran whatever-his-name does or what David Foster Wallace does. I don't give a fuck what any of those people do. I don't hang out with them, I'm not friends with them, I'm not part of the literati." Don't even get him started on Dave Eggers. "A book that I thought was mediocre was being hailed as the best book written by the best writer of my generation. Fuck that. And fuck him and fuck anybody who says that. I don't give a fuck what they think about me. I'm going to try to write the best book of my generation and I'm going to try to be the best writer."
And that was just appetizers. Before he was done, Frey had revealed:
Somewhere on Heaven's savannah, Papa Hemingway was firing off Gatling-gun salutes. In subsequent interviews, Frey has struck a more chastened tone and has even exhibited some blunt decency, but any interviewer who sticks around long enough is bound to be rewarded with another round of chest butting.
"It's a new phenomenon that writers aren't willing to say, 'I want to be the fucking best!'" he told Entertainment Weekly. "For most of the 20th century, when people like me grew up wanting to be writers, people like Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer -- none of these people got into writing and didn't take it fucking seriously. They got into it saying, 'I'm going to write books that change people's lives. I'm going to write the best book of my generation. I'm going to be remembered as someone who changed the way people think and write and live.' Well, I don't have a problem saying I want to be the fucking best."
Shifting gears: "I don't sit at home and think, 'Okay, I'm going to make this person think this about me.' To a certain extent, I don't give a fuck what you think about me."
A writer who wants to be thought of as the fucking best but doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks. Oh, the webs we authors weave when we leave the safety of the printed page. I happen to think "A Million Little Pieces" will be a top seller with or without the aggressive hyping -- as the most scalding account of addiction in recent memory, it deserves to be -- but not all publicity is good publicity, and if these take-no-prisoner interviews continue, the book in question may soon be dwarfed by the Other Story: James Frey's bombs bursting in air. He may become the latest cautionary example of how writers compromise themselves the moment they open their mouths.
Can any book live up to the expectations James Frey has created? Well, if this bullheaded, lionhearted book doesn't reach the level of masterpiece, it's not for lack of trying. Frey has devised a rolling, pulsing style that really moves -- an acquired taste, perhaps, but undeniably striking. It may not make him the world's best fucking author, but at least he can console himself with how far he has climbed in the world's estimation. A decade ago, he was, by his own admission, "an Alcoholic and a drug Addict and a Criminal." He had begun drinking while still a child. At 12, he was smoking pot. (It was the only drug he was able to give up: not strong enough.) At 15, he was selling drugs and liquor. At 18, he was blacking out every night, and at 21, he was throwing up, pissing and shitting blood. Booze, crack, pills, acid, mushrooms, meth, PCP, glue: He did them all. And after skipping bail in three different states, he took a face-first tumble down a fire escape, broke his nose, gashed his face, knocked out four of his teeth -- and woke up on a plane. The party was over.
When the book opens, Frey is being shipped off by his parents to Minnesota's famous Hazelden drug and alcohol treatment facility. Prostrate and strung out he may be, but he's no pushover. From the onset, he breaks rules, rebels against clinic authorities and rejects the 12-step pieties propagated by his well-meaning counselors -- refuses, in effect, to follow the Recovery Arc. And so "A Million Little Pieces" ends up following an arc of its own. It's about a stubborn, prickly, fucked-up guy who, with the help of the Tao Te Ching and some appealingly unsavory rehab mates, finds his own road back to life. "There is no God," he declares, "and there is no such thing as a Higher Power. I will do it with me. Alone ... Every time I want to drink or do drugs, I'm going to make the decision not to do them. I'll keep making that decision until it's no longer a decision, but a way of life."
