Ted Frank at Overlawyered has an interesting take on the Oprah/James Frey debacle:

An acquaintance—whose self-accounts have appeared in several books, radio stories, prominent magazines and web publications—published a short story in a “non-fiction” anthology. I asked her about it, since, even aside from unacknowledged name-changes, it plainly had invented and exaggerated elements, and a twisted chronology meant to fit a story arc. “Of course it does. It’s creative non-fiction,” she responded in exasperation, introducing me to a new definition of “non-fiction” that I hadn’t previously been aware of.

So the James Frey scandal (or a smaller one involving the Times’ Modern Romance section) doesn’t surprise me in the slightest; I’ve just come to assume that anything published under the memoir label in the twenty-first century is the modern-day equivalent of a Philip Roth novel that isn’t well-written enough to be successfully marketed as fiction.

The question is what will a court do when confronted with the inevitable free-riding class action, claiming that the publisher has committed consumer fraud, and demanding the right for every book owner to get a full refund and punitive damages (and, of course, a taste for the attorneys who took the entrepreneurial risk of typing up a summary of The Smoking Gun story and filing it in court), before settling for 50-cent coupons, a donation to a “Books for Addicts” program, and a multi-million-dollar attorney fee. Will there be a ruling that “non-fiction” memoirs that aren’t require labelling? If so, what are the First Amendment implications for other non-fiction books? A ruling that doesn’t provide a clear swath of protection for publishers could essentially abolish memoirs or first-person reporting, because a ruling that establishes any sort of rule calling Frey’s book consumer fraud (or even just potentially actionable consumer fraud) could encourage other attempts to sue other successful memoir-publishers for less egregious exaggerations.

Meanwhile, if you missed Oprah’s “Fake, but accurate” defense of Frey’s book on Larry King Live, you can listen and watch over at CNN’s website. Excerpt:

I feel about “A Million Little Pieces” that although some of the facts have been questioned, and people have the right to question because we live in a country that lets you do that, but the underlying message of redemption in James Frey’s memoir still resonates with me and I know that it resonates with millions of other people who have read this book and will continue to read this book…to me this is much ado about nothing…

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Reader Michele D. writes:

Among the worst facets of Oprah’s “fake but accurate” defense is this: recovery requires HONESTY. Until a person can be honest about what they were and what they are, they are still addicts. This book is a pattern for a failed, incomplete recovery; written by a still-lying addict and promoted by a huckster who uses America’s hunger for authenticity to enrich herself.

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Related:

Some ‘Pieces’ buyers offered refund

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