Among the lawmacho, there's a pronounced tendency to inflate one's youthful indiscretions in, ahem, certain situations. When comely undergrads slither into view, a bookish lad whose milky white noodles of biceps would be sapped by a strenuous afternoon of cite checking is often overcome by a desire to portray himself as a- reformed, of course!- tattooed and black-leather clad deviant badass. In his prime, no suburban mailbox was safe from the wrath of Lawboy! (My memory lingers on a particular evening when a classmate described to me, in a lengthy dramatic monologue, an incident wherein he called his second grade Hebrew school teacher a jackass bitch. The account was peppered with agonizing detail to the extent that it became evident that he subconsciously viewed this as the crowning glory of his life to date.)
While reading James Frey's A Million Little Pieces, the author's exaggerated braggadocio triggered repeated flashbacks to the lawboy bar scene. Rather than the "open and honest" memoir Oprah applauded, Frey's tale felt to me like so much pasteboard hyperbole. I imagined him reveling in his newfound bad-boy image and giggling gleefully to himself over the slew of naughty words he was getting away with uttering in public.
As The Smoking Gun reports, my nose-thumbing disdain proved prescient. I think this episode raises interesting questions regarding the truths we require in literature, fictional and non. It also provides my friend Emily with one more brick of evidence in the wall of her pet theory that Oprah's book club is inherently perilous and must, for the good of society, be dismantled. Carry on, Emily! America needs you!
The amount of joy that the negative press about that trite piece of garbage has brought me is indescribable.
Oh, and before reading it, I peeled the Oprah sticker off of the cover.
Posted by: emily | January 11, 2006 at 01:07 AM