Jan 18, 2006 | Uncategorized |
Tired of James Frey yet? Me too. But this from Nan Talese cannot go unnoticed.
“When the manuscript of A Million Little Pieces was received by us at Doubleday, it was received as nonfiction, as a memoir,” said Ms. Talese by phone. “Throughout the whole process of publication, it had always been a memoir, and for the first year and a half it was on sale, it was always a memoir with no disputation. It was never once discussed as fiction by me or anyone in my office.”
[…]
If Mr. Frey came to Ms. Talese today with the same manuscript, she said she’d publish it the same way, most likely with a disclaimer in the front. (In any case, she said that the book would never have worked as a novel, in part because the author himself is the only real character in it.) She added that if Mr. Frey had confessed prior to publication to the fabrications revealed by the Smoking Gun last week, she would have excised them from the book. A transgression had been committed, Ms. Talese acknowledged, but the person responsible was Mr. Frey. “I don’t think it is ever a good idea to purposely distort the truth,” she said.
If you want to read the whole article, it's here. I'm gonna bet, however, that she wouldn't have bought the book at all if she'd known significant events were made up.
Jan 18, 2006 | Uncategorized
This morning, a friend sent me a link for a website called theNextBigWriter. For $39.95 a year, or $4.95 a month, you can join this community of other writers and get your work reviewed. Whoever wins the novel competition gets $5000. There are poetry and short story competitions too. With those, I believe you get a contract. The contract just happens to be, so far as I can tell, with theNextBigWriter.com. They'll publish your story on their website, there is a contract, and you do get paid .03 per word. They even have StarReviewers, and I admit that seeing Pulitzer-nominated beside the name of one of those people is a nice thing. But not everyone gets star-reviewed. You only get that if your fellow writers/reviewers choose your work as the best in your category. Not sure if you automatically get the review, or if the website owners then pick who gets reviewed.
I am NOT saying this is a scam. Please don't pepper me with emails suggesting I am. What I AM saying is that I don't think writers need to pay to be a member of a community. There are plenty of free writing communities online. There are contests that get your work in front of acquiring editors and agents (and there's also the old fashioned way of submitting and waiting for rejection/acceptance, though you aren't likely to get comments on what was wrong if you get rejected). Just be aware, before you join something like this, what your options are. If you think you can get value from this site, by all means, go for it. Forty bucks a year isn't a lot, I suppose, and maybe you'll be the one to win the $5000. For me, though, I'll keep writing and submitting the old way. It's worked for all the writers I know, so why mess with the formula?
Oh, and if you'd like to see a sample of the writing that's on this board (so you know where your fellow critique partners are in the process), you'll have to join first. [Correction: you may join as a reviewer, which is free; you can then read stories and see if you'd like to join as a writer (writers pay)] That alone raises my personal big red flag. That's just me though. You may not mind. Let me know how it works out.
Jan 17, 2006 | Uncategorized
And just in case you haven't heard enough about James Frey and his million little lies, Michiko Kakutani has an article in the NYT book section:
It is not, however, just a case about truth-in-labeling or the misrepresentations of one author: after all, there have been plenty of charges about phony or inflated memoirs in the past, most notably about Lillian Hellman's 1973 book “Pentimento.” It is a case about how much value contemporary culture places on the very idea of truth. Indeed, Mr. Frey's contention that having 5 percent or so of his book in dispute was “comfortably within the realm of what's appropriate for a memoir” and the troubling insistence of his publishers and his cheerleader Oprah Winfrey that it really didn't matter if he'd taken liberties with the facts of his story underscore the waning importance people these days attach to objectivity and veracity.
We live in a relativistic culture where television “reality shows” are staged or stage-managed, where spin sessions and spin doctors are an accepted part of politics, where academics argue that history depends on who is writing the history, where an aide to President Bush, dismissing reporters who live in the “reality-based community,” can assert that “we're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” Phrases like “virtual reality” and “creative nonfiction” have become part of our language. Hype and hyperbole are an accepted part of marketing and public relations. And reinvention and repositioning are regarded as useful career moves in the worlds of entertainment and politics. The conspiracy-minded, fact-warping movies of Oliver Stone are regarded by those who don't know better as genuine history, as are the most sensationalistic of television docudramas.
Most disturbing of all, however, is that Oprah has now chosen Elie Wiesel's Night for her book club. Oprah says that Wiesel's book “should be required reading for all humanity.” Yes, absolutely. But does it cheapen Mr. Wiesel and his experience to follow serial liar Frey? Already, the NYT reports that Mr. Wiesel has been asked if his book is true.
Mr. Wiesel said he had not read Mr. Frey's book and could not comment on the controversy. He acknowledged that some people and institutions, including on occasion The New York Times, have referred to “Night” as a novel, “mainly because of its literary style.”
“But it is not a novel at all,” he said. “I know the difference,” he added, noting that “Night” is the first of his 47 books, several of which are novels. “I make a distinction between what I lived through and what I imagined others to have lived through.”
Now how come James Frey and Oprah don't seem to know the difference?
Jan 16, 2006 | Uncategorized |
The Elvis Tree. It was in an Elvis movie, not Blue Hawaii, but another one. Cool, huh? 
Jan 16, 2006 | Uncategorized |
Do you write to music? Or do you prefer silence? Does it matter how the music is played? (Huh?) No, really. I can't listen to any music with words when writing. Unless I'm wearing headphones. Somehow, the words being right in my ears makes them fade to background. If they're on speakers, I focus on the words. Weird, huh?
So I'm listening to my MP3 player the other night and I'm working on a chapter. The words are in the background, just doing their thing. Then Journey comes on and I had this aha moment: this book is a Journey book! So now I've got Mike compiling all our Journey music so I can listen while writing. The last book was a Bon Jovi book. The medieval I wrote was a classical book (lots of Mozart, Beethoven, and Ravel's Bolero for some reason). That might have had something to do with the fact I hadn't yet figured out the headphone thing and was only listening to music without words.
So what kind of book are you writing?
—I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.~ Peter De Vries
