So, James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" is a fraud after all. I think this occurs to most people when reading it but I figured since it had been out a while and due to its popularity any fraud would have been run to ground. I googled it in December and concluded most of it must be true since not a whisper of its lack of veracity could be found. Quite a change googling it now!
Strange fascination these days with "real life"...certainly reality shows have very little to do with reality (thank goodness for that!) "Reality" is always better expressed in fiction. Read Alice Munro if you're looking for real life.
Too bad Frey wasn't as honest as Sybille Bedford who answered the following when chatting with Bruce Chatwin about her "travel book" on Mexico ("A Visit to Don Otavio: A Traveller's Tale From Mexico"):
"Of course it's a novel. I wanted to make something light and poetic. I didn't take a single note when I was in Mexico. If you clutter yourself with notes it all goes away. I did, of course, send postcards to friends, and when I started writing, I called them in."
