New Literary Genre: BioFiction
There's a best-selling book out there called "A Million Little Pieces" and it's a best-seller primarily because Oprah featured it in her book club. I haven't read the thing, and in a second I'll explain why I'm glad I didn't.
The Smoking Gun (TSG) wanted to put up a mug shot of the book's author, James Frey, because the book is all about how the author survived addiction, alcoholism and a life of crime. When they had difficulty finding any evidence of the life of crime that this guy supposedly survived they started to dig and the result is a long expose that pretty much shows that Frey has invented a new genre that I'll call BioFiction.
This guy Frey is a mid-30s white guy who grew up in an upper middle class home and had what I'd call a relatively common alcohol and drug experience in his high school and college days. In fact he seems remarkably like most of the guys I knew in college. Now he's taken those experiences and grossly embelished them to create a story he could sell; in fact he first submitted the book as fiction but had to "revise" it to a biographical account to get it published. And now he's a millionaire.
I won't go into all the details since you can read the TSG piece for that, but I will say that based on the book excerpts in the expose I'm very glad I didn't bother to read it. Actually, a book being featured in the Oprah club is a good way to guarantee that I won't read it. Oprah's scheduled a follow up appearance for this guy, and he's already published a follow up and apparently is working on the film version with some leading lights in Hollywood. I wonder if Oprah is going to cancel the follow up after reading the expose and it will be interesting to see if his pending book/movie deals go down the toilet.
