A retraction of my own.

A while ago, I said here that I didn't care too awfully much about James Frey's dishonest memoir "Million Little Pieces," and that I was more upset that the form of the book was the most obnoxious thing I've read since "He's Just Not That Into You."

I lied.

I think James Frey is a weasel. And now I need to post about it again. Why? Because all the cool kids are doing it.

I don't know if I would have hated the book as much as I do if I had read it before I knew about the lies. Probably. But the lying really makes it worse. At first it was just annoying. Then I got PISSED. I can pinpoint the exact moment that the change occurred.

About a famous recovering rockstar who lectured about his history:

"...After a while, after far too long a while, he talks about drinking and drugs. When he talks of heroin, he taps the bend of his elbow with two fingers, when he talks of coke he sniffs, booze he makes a motion like he has a bottle, pills as if he's tossing them in. He claims that at the height of his use he would do five thousand dollars of cocaine and heroin a day mixed with four to five fifths of booze a night and up to forty pills of Valium to sleep. He says this with complete sincerity and with the utmost seriousness.
I am tired and I am spent. I am nervous and I am happy. I am calm. Were I in my normal frame of mind, I would stand up, point my finger, scream Fraud, and chase this Chump Motherfucker down and give him a beating. Were I in my normal frame of mind, after I gave him his beating, I would make him come back here and apologize to everyone for wasting their precious time. After the apology, I would tell him that if I ever heard of him spewing his bullshit fantasies in Public again, I would cut off his precious hair, scar his precious lips, and take all of his goddamn gold records and shove them straight up his ass.
I don't like this man. I don't like what he has to say or how he's saying it. I don't believe him and his Rock Star status isn't enough to make me buy the shit he's trying to sell. Four to five thousand dollars is enough to kill a Person several times over....
There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth. That this man is standing in front of me and everyone else in this room lying to us is heresy. The truth is all that matters. This is fucking heresy."

And it doesn't stop here. Throughout the book, Frey makes sure we all know how important the Truth is to him. James, apparently, doesn't like Liars.

About someone in treatment who exaggerates and lies about his bad deeds:

"He is telling a story about some Mobsters he knows in Brooklyn, claiming that he manages their money through investments in the Stock Market and they get him drugs and women and whatever else he wants. When he talks of amounts of drugs, Matty laughs and says he should have asked for more. Bobby then corrects himself and says that he actually did get more. When he talks of women, Ed tells him that four at a time isn't that big of a deal and Bobby says the next time that he had eight...
Eventually, I get tired of Bobby and his bullshit and I snicker at a comment he makes about the amount of money he earns, which he claims to be in the millions each year. He stops talking and he stares at me and he asks me what the fuck I think is so funny. I stare back and I tell him that I find his lies amusing...
Bobby, like all Liars confronted, is instantly defensive and instantly mad."

About a TV show depicting a drug addict:

"She is a beautiful young woman whose body is absent of any bruises, scars or track marks. She wears dirty clothes that are ragged in a glamorous way. She cries whenever anyone talks to her and there are large, black bags under her eyes, though her crying is obviously fake and the bags under her eyes are a different size each time we see her...."

Needless to say, James doesn't like that particular program. He goes on to describe in great detail what he would do to punish the people in that program for being liars.

So, yeah. I think James Frey is a weasel who has made a huge profit off of being a liar. And a hypocrite. I don't have time for that.