Word: frey
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...literary convention in Texas last weekend, after a speech by novelist Joyce Carol Oates on the nature of truth in memoirs, Talese took the opportunity to go after the queen of television. In an earlier discussion at the convention, Talese had already called Oprah's slap-down of Frey on television "mean and self-serving" and described it as an ambush. At the Oates event, she was even more outspoken, and her remarks were captured by C-SPAN cameras. The show may air as early as this weekend...
Talese had apparently come to the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference of the Southwest in Grapevine, Texas, ready to rumble. In an afternoon discussion on Saturday, Talese brought up the issue of Frey's memoir. Saying she was unapologetic about publishing the book, Talese said in her genteel, mid-Atlantic accent that it was Oprah who needed to apologize for her behavior in the affair. Talese argued that Frey, in the gripping manuscript he submitted, had described himself as a liar, a cheater and an addict, and under those circumstances she did not believe she was reading "the New Testament...
...Texas heartland, where many consider truth a constant and not a variable, not everyone agreed. In a question-answer session that followed, a self-described "Oprah fan" rose to attack Frey, claiming he had lied, embellished and fooled those who believed in the truth of his book - including Oprah, who told her audience she had been duped and betrayed. (A judge recently ordered Random House, Talese's publishing house, to refund $2.35 million to readers.) The question prompted Talese to take the microphone. She pointedly turned toward the C-SPAN crew that was filming the event and launched into...
...going to be a panel discussion with Frank Rich of the New York Times and Richard Cohen of the Washington Post on "Truth in America," but just before air time she was told by a producer that the show had been changed and would now be titled "The James Frey Controversy." She said she was bothered by the sanctimoniousness of Oprah Winfrey and the way the talk-show host attacked Frey, whose work Talese believes has great value for anyone who must deal with a loved one who is an addict. The publisher said that when she took responsibility...
...response to emailed questions from TIME, Oates clarified her stance, saying, "the tradition of personal memoir has always been highly 'fictionalized' - colored with an individual's own 'emotional truth' - and that the James Frey memoir would seem to be in this category. It would seem that Oprah Winfrey was judging the memory from a more literal perspective, but this makes sense since the great majority of her readers would expect memoirs and autobiographies to be 'true.'" She says that she has never read Frey's book and that she chooses to write fiction because memoirs today "strain credulity." The novelist...