Word: memoirize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...stories Frey tells in his 2003 memoir, A Million Little Pieces, are currently in dispute, but that last tale isn't. To date A Million Little Pieces has sold about 3.5 million copies, helped not a little by the fact that Oprah Winfrey chose it as her book club's third nonfiction title. She proclaimed Frey the Man Who Kept Oprah Awake at Night. The only book that sold better than A Million Little Pieces last year was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Frey's 2005 sequel, My Friend Leonard, didn't do too badly either...
...stories told in and around James Frey's memoir A Million Little Pieces, many are currently in dispute, but that last one is not. To date A Million Little Pieces has sold 4 million copies, helped not a little by the fact that Oprah chose it as her book club's first-ever non-fiction title. The only book that sold better than Frey's last year was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince...
...haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won't dignify this bulls___ with any sort of further response." On Wednesday (having apparently reconsidered that last bit somewhat) he appeared on Larry King with a more nuanced position: "A memoir is a subjective retelling of events," he said. "It's an individual's perception of what happened in their own life; this is my recollection of my life." Oprah, in her inimitable semi-divine fashion, called in to the show to lend her carefully phrased support: "The underlying message of redemption...
...There's a distinction being made here that's worth scrutinizing. The "subjective retelling" defense invokes the double layer of distortion that's inevitable in any memoir: events are filtered through the author's memory, and then they're fuzzed even further by the inherently impressionistic nature of any literary medium. Short of the unexpected appearance of a Recording Angel, there isn't much a memoirist can do to pull aside that two-ply veil. But before we get lost in an epistemological fog, let's not forget that those distortions must be kept separate from the wilful deceptions...
DIED. HEINRICH HARRER, 93, Austrian adventurer and ex-Nazi whose 1953 memoir, Seven Years in Tibet, was the basis for the 1997 film, in which he was played by Brad Pitt; in Vienna. A onetime SS member who later renounced Nazism, Harrer was a skilled alpinist. In 1938 he took part in the first ascent of the Eiger north face in Switzerland. The next year, he embarked on a Himalayan expedition that led to his stay in Tibet, during which he became a teacher, adviser and friend to the Dalai Lama...