In explaining why she wanted James Frey back on the show for a follow-up interview, Oprah Winfrey cited a revelation that had come to her after meditation which one day progressed to her bursting into tears in the shower. Her people at Harpo had pointed out her ire in the earlier interview with the author - and she professed utter surprise. It was all incomprehensible to her. She had been harsh, she finally admitted; she had at her own ego's insistence taken the superior role in making a writer own up to his mistake, but excused her attitude because she had "put herself out there" in recommending his book A Million Little Pieces for the Oprah Book Club, and then when it wasn't what she'd told everyone it was, someone had to pay.
"How DARE you!" had been her earlier position, and in hindsight she realized that outrage was the result of her own ego. "I'm so embarrassed," she remembers saying more than once in that interview. The questions she'd asked, she agreed, were necessary, but her harshness in the way she'd asked the questions, was not. She'd lost her usual compassion. With few exceptions, her shows had been about showing compassion for people as they told their stories. She hadn't given him that empathy.
Yesterday, in part-one of this interview, Oprah expressed surprise that the author had felt ambushed in the previous interview. A picture was shown of a large painting he owned with the words Public Stoning in large letters against a pastel sky background. Surely that doesn't represent anything having to do with our earlier interview, she insists, and he explains that he thinks of that painting more as a warning to himself than a remembrance of a day he considers more like a personal car crash. It's not something he really remembers, or wants to.
They apologize to each other, and with Oprah appearing misty-eyed, it's time for a break, but not before we see James Frey rise from his chair and reach out to give her a hug.
The show gets better after that. We get to see where he works, and see him signing his newest book, The Last Testament of the Bible. Oprah almost stirs things up again when she comments that he must have written the book to cause trouble, that he must possibly be arrogant. He'd explained that he wanted to write defiantly, in ways that nobody had before, as against convention, but that he knew he had something not only important to say, but that would change people's lives. All great art has that goal, to shake things up, he says.
After a short discussion of his infant's son's death, Oprah bumbles with this observation: "So you got over that, and then . . . "
James Frey, in the fastest reply he's made in two days, interrupts. "I didn't get over it; I'll never get over it."
He came back from France but didn't want to. He loved France. He realized he had to face all the things he'd run from with the book and its aftermath. He wrote. That was his job and he loved it. He loved his wife and family. He loved his life.
Back on her high road as super interviewer, Oprah asks, as she's asked all her guests, "What did you learn from all that?"
It was a gift, he says, and his life is better, happier.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Trial by Oprah
Yesterday, Oprah Winfrey had James Frey back for a follow-up interview. Instead of going forward to ask what he'd accomplished since thier first interview (in which she took him to task for lies in his book A Million Little Pieces) she went back continuously to thier previous interview. How did he feel; what did he think; what did his wife say; what did other people say? How did he think he could get away with a book purportedly marked as a memoir when he'd written things that were wholly made up and not true?
The original interview was many years ago. I kept waiting for her to say she'd read his intervening works, as I have, with great appreciation. My Friend Leonard made me cry. Bright Shining Morning, for instance, and others. I wanted to shout, "You're talking to a writer, not a criminal!" The more I watched the more uncomfortable I became. I'd tuned-in especially because as a writer attempting my own autobiographic fiction, I'm already experiencing the same problems he had, both in writing and then in releasing such personal stories. There's any number of people around every writer, such as family, who don't want your story told. And as a writer you're absolutely compelled to tell your story. If you tell the straight truth from your life, those people will hate you. Can you make it more palatable by making it fiction? Can you balance both in the same book?
I recognized immediately his look of near catatonic resolve as he replied to her in a monotone, as if he'd inwardly cautioned himself - I will not blow up, I will take what comes and deal with it in a rational and straightforward manner. I am not on trial.
Over and over, with what I thought intelligence and thoughtful introspection, James Frey outlined his work, his life and his writing. Again and again, he took full responsibility for the mistake of letting his handlers (agents, editors, publishers) market what was essentially autobiographical fiction as a memoir. Oprah's insistence that the now-memoir was false and deliberately sold us all a pack of lies was not to be excused, she kept coming back to that outraged stance. If she couldn't stop going back to the beginning, he could play that game too. Back to Why I Write.
James Frey mentioned the same people I would have, as starting points to wanting to write in the first place. This was the best part of the show. He cited Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac, writers who made him suddenly realize that meaningful art and literature could be made from a writer's own life. I would have added D. H. Lawrence and a few poets, especially poet-novelists such as Annie Dillard, Margaret Atwood, James Dickey and Kenneth Rexroth.
Once a book is done, it's done, and despite editing the bejesus out of it, a writer moves forward to whatever's next. As the author of two novels, I have no desire to dissect the circumstances surrounding the creation of my past works, even if I could remember what I originally thought and felt. I've already solved those problems. I've finger-biting-angsted those books trough release and they are now old news. The only thing interesting to a writer is what's ahead which means the next work and the next. Being asked what one thought and felt seven to ten years ago seems deliberately cruel here in light of the furor that caused one writer to leave the country to escape unwanted attention, as Oprah Winfrey's show years ago caused James Frey. Will there be an apology?
There will be a part two to this interview this afternoon. I'll be watching.
The original interview was many years ago. I kept waiting for her to say she'd read his intervening works, as I have, with great appreciation. My Friend Leonard made me cry. Bright Shining Morning, for instance, and others. I wanted to shout, "You're talking to a writer, not a criminal!" The more I watched the more uncomfortable I became. I'd tuned-in especially because as a writer attempting my own autobiographic fiction, I'm already experiencing the same problems he had, both in writing and then in releasing such personal stories. There's any number of people around every writer, such as family, who don't want your story told. And as a writer you're absolutely compelled to tell your story. If you tell the straight truth from your life, those people will hate you. Can you make it more palatable by making it fiction? Can you balance both in the same book?
I recognized immediately his look of near catatonic resolve as he replied to her in a monotone, as if he'd inwardly cautioned himself - I will not blow up, I will take what comes and deal with it in a rational and straightforward manner. I am not on trial.
Over and over, with what I thought intelligence and thoughtful introspection, James Frey outlined his work, his life and his writing. Again and again, he took full responsibility for the mistake of letting his handlers (agents, editors, publishers) market what was essentially autobiographical fiction as a memoir. Oprah's insistence that the now-memoir was false and deliberately sold us all a pack of lies was not to be excused, she kept coming back to that outraged stance. If she couldn't stop going back to the beginning, he could play that game too. Back to Why I Write.
James Frey mentioned the same people I would have, as starting points to wanting to write in the first place. This was the best part of the show. He cited Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac, writers who made him suddenly realize that meaningful art and literature could be made from a writer's own life. I would have added D. H. Lawrence and a few poets, especially poet-novelists such as Annie Dillard, Margaret Atwood, James Dickey and Kenneth Rexroth.
Once a book is done, it's done, and despite editing the bejesus out of it, a writer moves forward to whatever's next. As the author of two novels, I have no desire to dissect the circumstances surrounding the creation of my past works, even if I could remember what I originally thought and felt. I've already solved those problems. I've finger-biting-angsted those books trough release and they are now old news. The only thing interesting to a writer is what's ahead which means the next work and the next. Being asked what one thought and felt seven to ten years ago seems deliberately cruel here in light of the furor that caused one writer to leave the country to escape unwanted attention, as Oprah Winfrey's show years ago caused James Frey. Will there be an apology?
There will be a part two to this interview this afternoon. I'll be watching.
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