For those of you who have been doing more productive things like updating your FaceBook status, or searching youtube for videos of people falling, let me fill you in on the latest controversy to hit the literary scene.

In 2006, James Frey, the king of shenanigans, first burst onto the literary scene with the publication of his non-fiction memoir, A Million Fat Lies. Sorry, I meant, A Million Little Pieces. This was drooled over by Oprah who “couldn’t put it down” and endorsed it wholeheartedly as the gut wrenching story of a man who had suffered through serious drug addiction, been in and out of jail, had the trauma of losing a loved one to suicide, and out of sheer determination and gumption, pulled through it all and wrote an empowering book about his experience. Then she found out he fibbed a little. Okay, a lot.

James Frey Responding to Oprah's Questions

Three months later, I watched an emotionally draining (for him) and thoroughly entertaining (for me) episode of Oprah where she uses a very dull knife to peel open James Frey, like one would a grape: slowly and with precision. She sat down next to him, uncharacteristically cold, on the sofa. The studio audience watched intently, gasping at all the right moments, as she asked him some difficult questions and called him out on things he’d said the last time he was on her show. He had said, for example, that the reason he remembered some of the events in such vivid detail is that he had taken copious notes in journals. She made him admit that he’d lied about that. And every time she told him that he had embarrassed her, his head sunk lower and lower. What I found interesting about the whole incident was that he clearly didn’t think he had done anything wrong, and yet was willing to ingratiate himself for an hour in order to keep his millions.

Fast forward to November, 2010. The internet is bubbling with indignation at his latest act of shenaniginity. He was invited to give a talk to Columbia University’s MFA students, ironically, about “truth” and introduce his new publishing company, Full Fathom Five. He was a humiliated author, but he was a multi-million dollar-New York Times Bestselling-Oprah Book Club, humiliated author. And that makes all the difference.

Nobody, except those who were at his talk, know what he said about “truth,” which as I’ve learned through my research into Project 1984 is a difficult thing to assess. If he remembered having his teeth extracted without novacane, embellished his jail time from a few hours to a few months, or having his girlfriend commit suicide by hanging herself rather than by cutting her wrists (which he claims is how it really went down), how much does that really detract from the story?  Does it still fall in the realm of Emotional Truth? But nobody really cares about what pearls of wisdom he was imparting to students about “truth.” What has everyone moaning about Frey are two things: 1) He is James Frey and is allegedly an unethical writer; 2) his recruiting methods of targeting writers from top tier MFA programs and offering them notoriously low compensation is seen as exploitative. Some place the blame on Frey’s lack of ethics, others on the naivete of beginning writing students, and a few believe the program itself, including the professors, is to blame.

As soon as I saw that Oprah Winfrey episode where he’s groveling in hopes that she won’t sue him and will let him keep his fame and fortune, I knew what sort of bloke James Frey was: he was the kind of writer that is steadily becoming more pervasive in the “new generation” of writers, one who will do anything for the end result: to be published. If his publisher had asked him to make his character an obese drug addict who was also addicted to french fries, burgers, and pizza, he would have done it. I’m working on fiction, and if anyone asked me to drastically change something in my story before they would publish it, I would have to think long and hard about it; to be published is obviously important to me, but not at the expense of my story.

It's official: everyone is an author

Just take a look at celebrities like Paris Hilton, Lauren Conrad, even Jersey Shore’s “Situation” who have come out with works of  creative non-fiction. I use the word “come out” because that is literally what they are doing. They come out and pose with books they haven’t written (gasp), and even handle questions about their writing process, all the while knowing they had nothing to do with actual writing. So who did? Ghost writers. There are many book packaging companies like Alloy Entertainment whose recent successes include Gossip Girls and Pretty Little Liars. The companies vary in their contractual terms, but are similar in what they do: they employ an army of severely underpaid writers who have chosen to enter into contract with them and agreed never to reveal their names in connection with any work they’ve completed with these companies. The draw is that these companies usually already have a concept, and publishers already willing to buy it before the book has even been written.

James Frey’s company, Full Fathom Five, is not that much different in its operation, but there are a few things that have people really riled up. In addition to incredibly low pay – $250 signing and $250 upon completion, his recruitment methods are seen as unethical. He doesn’t put advertisements in writing magazines; he gets invited to top MFA programs where he talks about his company and is actively pitched by MFA students enticed by the prospect of making connections in the publishing and film industry, and possibly coming out with the next Harry Potter while making 30% to 49% of all revenue.

One of the biggest arguments that well intentioned people claim is that Frey is exploiting new writers because they don’t know any better (check out this article).  But is it really the job of a creative writing instructor to talk about publishing? I’ve had one on one discussions with my creative writing professor, Steve Yarbrough, about certain things relating to publishing, but my primary goal in my MFA program was to become a better writer.

TeenWritersBloc.com

My wife, Sona Charaipotra, recently started an MFA program in Young Adult fiction at the New School in NYC where she blogs with twelve other YA MFAers at TeenWritersBloc.com. Some of them have worked in the industry, but most of them know quite a lot about the world of publishing primarily from the the internet and talking with other writers, not their creative writing professors. They have read all sorts of things about Alloy,the company that created the Gossip Girls and Pretty Little Liars series, so the students are not strangers to the exploitative tactics of companies like Full Fathom Five. One of the bloggers at TeenWritersBloc.com, Corey Haydu, actually worked for a book packager and has written a fascinating blog about it. Another student even pitched James Frey’s Full Fathom Five, and as soon as she found out the rate and the fact that they wanted her to come up with the concept, she thought, like any normal writer should, why wouldn’t I just write it myself?