According to The New York Times, disgraced author James Frey is coming back with a new book: this one, Bright Shiny Morning, will be clearly labeled a work of fiction.
Frey's first book, A Million Little Pieces, was a bestseller featured on Oprah that garnered further attention when it was revealed that the book, billed as a memoir, contained numerous fabrications. Our own Beth Gaston Moon called Frey the "Milli Vanilli of modern American literature." Random House agreed to pay up to $2.35 million to readers who claimed they were defrauded.
His new book will be with Harper Collins, and it remains to be seen whether he'll be able to have a hit.
Did Frey make a mistake? Yes, of course. Was anyone hurt by it? I seriously doubt it. On the other hand, the advice doled out in Roberty Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad is often terrible and, according to some, completely made up. Given that Kiyosaki literally advises readers to change their lives, I would argue that this should be a much, much larger scandal than James Frey.
Frey made a mistake and he apologized. Hopefully readers will give his new work of fiction a fair chance.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-13-2007 @ 11:30PM
Yesh Prabhu said...
Because James Frey is a very good writer, Bright Shiny Morning will be a big hit. I only hope he will use proper punctuations in this novel, especially periods in proper places. Let us not forget, however, that he first submitted his "A million little pieces" as fiction to his agent. But the agent could not find him a publisher who was willing to publish it as fiction. The publishers wished to publish it as non-fiction, because non-fiction books out-sell novels! And of course, James Frey readily obliged. Don't blame just James Frey, blame the publisher, and also his agent, who did not give him good advice.
Yesh Prabhu