I read A Million Little Pieces a couple of months after everyone hated James Frey, mainly to spite Oprah. Her public humiliation of him really unnerved me, as did her systematic way of turning all of her viewers and basically everyone against him because of the fact that she's basically a deity at this point. I don't know if this is a controversial viewpoint, but I really do not care if memoir's are complete fact or not. David Sedaris, one of my favorite writers, was questioned in an interview about fabrication after the Frey scandal, and how a reporter had determined that some of the elements in his stories weren't true. (They were unbelievably superficial details and more exaggerations than lies; Sedaris has said many times that the fact-checkers at the New Yorker are pretty thorough.) He admitted straight away that he exaggerated, and said that he equated people getting all upset about lies in memoirs to that one person who, after another has told a joke, ruins it by saying "oh, that's not true; it didn't happen like that." If the joke was funny and served its intended purpose by providing humor, who cares if it's fact or fiction? Well, a lot of people do, but I'm not one of them. A Million Little Pieces was nothing particularly groundbreaking, but it was quite interesting and well-written, and I still feel that way knowing that he fabricated a good deal of it.
I don't like memoirs, and my love of David Sedaris is one of the rare exceptions to this rule. Angela's Ashes, which I read this year, was unbelievably tedious, and more than that, joyless. I have a lot of trouble feeling sympathy for characters in books in general, and by the end of Angela's Ashes, I was so annoyed and fed up with the continual "My family is poor/ My father drinks away all of our money" reprise that I wished for all of the character's deaths by the end of the book. Same with a short story titled "Under the Influence" about a man's father's addiction to alcohol- by the end of it, I felt nothing close to sympathy for the protagonist.
I could just be heartless, but I think I was really more turned off by both of these stories because they were something I cannot stand- manipulative. In "Under the Influence" moreso than in Angela's Ashes, there was a clear message at hand: do not drink, this is what happens. "Message" pieces are something I cannot stand, and try to stay away from in general. The movie Avatar that opened last year and was all the rage completely frustrated me, making me a member of a handful of people who really hated it. There were many things wrong with Avatar: the acting was sub-par, the villains were 2D, the whole thing was a copy of Pocohontas, the element that the villains wanted the land for was actually called "unobtanium"- but my biggest issue with it by far was it's message that we have to protect the environment and be green and save the planet. The go-green movement is something I think is a great thing, and really love, but even agreeing with the movie makers position, I was annoyed at it being shoved in the audience's faces for the duration of the picture. Mixing movies with politics is a tricky thing, and the audience should be aware of it. People going to see a Michael Moore or Citizens United film are going to know that there's a political bent to it, but if you're putting out a movie like Avatar, and then putting in a strong political message in- there is a great deal of manipulation going on. The preservation of our environment and Earth should not have to be a political movement or message, but it is.
Manipulative books do this all the time, and I saw it with "Under the Influence"- the man's father drank, the man himself ends up emotionally wrecked and resents his father, his father dies an early death, etc. All while sending an obvious message- you shouldn't drink. Again, a message I mostly agree with, but it's presented in such a way that it almost seems like a cause and effect: if you drink, ever, you will become an alcoholic who abuses your kids and dies young. It's a tactic that seems so disingenuous to me: getting your audience to become fearful. It also seems like a tactic that helps you isolate yourself from criticism: granted, critics are great and still do it, but for the everyday person, people are judgmental, and when I said I hated Angela's Ashes and "Under the Influence" many people I talked to looked horrified that I would find such a sad book about alcoholism and poverty to be "tedious."
More than that, there is something sort of... unnerving to me about using your personal tragedy to sell books. I feel that way anytime I see a People Magazine article about some horrible family tragedy. There was one where this father was interviewed about losing all of his children and his wife in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. It was about a year or so after it happened, and the article was just about how his tragedy and how he was coping with this unimaginable loss. I of course felt overwhelming sympathy for this man, but I also couldn't help but feeling uncomfortable about him selling his tragedy and personal grief to a national magazine, for everyone to see. Grief is a personal thing, and reading that article left me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
Manipulation is hard to avoid, and I'm liking Portrait of an Addict so far in that it doesn't seem to be doing that just yet. I like stories that are more like "this is what happened, make of it what you will," rather than a book that feels like it was written solely to send a message.
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