Thursday, January 12, 2006

Three Little Memoirs

I can't tell you how disappointed I am by this whole Million Little Pieces controversy. If you are not familiar, let me give you the short story. James Frey wrote a book about drug addiction and alcoholism. He writes about recovery and redemption. He writes about the ugliness and equality addiction has on a human.

Then, it is revealed that all his facts may or may not be truthful. This doesn't change how I view the book, but it changes my motivation for reading the book. You see, I had this literate plan. I was going to work my way through a variety of literary genres. January was going to be "Messed Up Memoir Month". I was going to read A Million Little Pieces and Running with Scissors. Also, I was going to read The Year of Magical Thinking...probably not as messed up, but still a memoir.

Actually, I don't really care. It was still an interesting book, but I found out about this controversy with only ten pages left in the book. I am not one of the millions that claim this to be the best book. It is an easy book to read. It reads quickly. It is pretty graphic in the beginning with its vomiting and detoxing, but I still think it is worth a read. It helped me understand the compulsion of addiction.

If you have any "Messed UP Memoirs" to recommend, please do.

3 comments:

Super Rachel Zana said...

Sara: I just read The Summer of Ordinary Ways by Nicole Lea Helget this morning: farm girl from Southern MN. Not a super great memoir, I didn't think, but some wonderful writing and interesting moments. She has a messed up family, in my view. I found this book in the new section of my library.

Unknown said...

Another big one at the store is Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, his last book, Angela's Ashes, is also a memoir. Happy reading!

Court

Anonymous said...

I was more disappointed in the hoopla SURROUNDING the situation than the situation itself. To me, it was a good book. I don't really CARE if he hit a cop or not. The truth of the book, for me, was his journey to sobriety.

The other thing: James Frey didn't appear to "hide" anything. When smoking gun asked him questions, he was honest. He said things had been changed and embellished for the sake of the story as well as protecting identies, etc.

To me? much ado about NOTHING.