'Mr. Frey, Please Report to the Principal's Office'
Did you catch Oprah scolding author James Frey? Oh, mama. It was rich. There was Frey, sitting forlornly on the couch in the Principal Winfrey’s office, where Oprah scowled the look of a woman scorned.
Frey is the fella who wrote “A Million Little Pieces,” supposedly a memoir but come to find out he embellished his life story from whole cloth or the lives of others. Hey, anybody who used that long might have issues, right? Who knows? The guy pumped out a huge hit, no denying that.
Nor is there any denying Oprah’s support for the book, including a talk-on during “Larry King Live” when she defended Frey after some careful readers wondered about the “memoir’s” veracity.
A week later Oprah, so important use of her last name is optional, summoned Frey to the office when she publicly caned him and his dishonesty. For his part Frey was contrite, but this show was Oprah’s and the subject was her and the couch was hers and the scowl was hers.
James Frey made some of it up. He’ll have to deal with those literary demons although I wonder if the Oprah dress down will help sales. Why he consented to be on the show, I’ll never know. Yeesh! Scary stuff.
That’s because while Oprah was rightly angry about a fictive memoir, her little session with Frey on the couch was all about her, all about her — like the rest of us — being duped.
I haven’t read “A Million Little Pieces” but friends recommend it. I have read enough about it that Frey claims his recover from drugs and alcohol was apparently a matter of willpower. That’s some sort of will.
But still not enough to have a good response for the Principal Winfrey.