Bob WeathersThe media sizzled last month with the news that portions of James Frey’s memoir, “A Million Little Pieces,” were complete fabrications. His book supposedly chronicled his life as a drug addict who bounced through a variety of destructive behaviors and related tragedies, to eventually land in rehab and survive. Then Oprah Winfrey, America’s feel-good guru, added the volume to her book club, and it exploded, selling more 3.5 million copies.
But then the website www.thesmokinggun.com exposed the falsehoods and the squishy history of Frey’s memoir. The accusations initiated a visit by Frey to the “Larry King Live” show on Jan. 11, where, during the call-in segment of the show, Winfrey herself telephoned to offer her support for Frey.
At the time, neither Frey nor Winfrey bothered to deny the allegations that portions of his memoir were untrue. Instead, they balanced on the spinning log of postmodernism and proclaimed that, frankly, it didn’t matter if the events were factual. “What is relevant,” Oprah instructed, “is that he was a drug addict and stepped out of history to be the man he is today and to take that message to save other people and allow them to save themselves.” Yeah, Frey agreed, helpfully explaining that a memoir is “subjective” and is an “individual’s perception of what happened,” and that it contains “emotional truth.”
Huh? I thought stuff either happened or it didn’t. That it was either true or false. Most of us live that way, right? We expect history to be, well, historical. At least, that’s our world.
Oprah has since recanted. But not Frey. In Frey’s world, truth is an emotional response, a subjective, feel-good jiggle. That means, of course, if a lie makes you feel better, then it is okay to be lied to.
No thanks. When it comes to life, I’d rather stand on a rock, not a sponge. I need a book that tells me the truth, about myself and my life and my God. That book, the Bible, may not always make me feel good about myself, but it makes me feel great about God. He is trustworthy, He is reliable, He is Jesus, “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” That’s Truth even James Frey could depend on.