The Frey Continues
Incidentally, the Times story today is headlined, ""Writer Says He Made Up Some Details." It's important to note that Frey said no such thing. He said he "embellished," "changed," and "toned up." He
never said he invented material—which, as the Smoking Gun showed, he clearly did.
By the way, there's a fascinating back-and-forth in the article—nice going, reporter Edward Wyatt—on the subject of whether Frey's actions are acceptable. Writer Gay Talese says they are not; Doubleday publisher Nan Talese, who happens to be both Frey's publisher and Gay Talese's wife, says they are.
Here's Gay: "Nonfiction takes no liberty with the facts, and it should not," Mr. Talese said. "I think all writers should be held accountable. The trouble with book publishers is that they don't have the staff or they don't want to have the staff to ensure the veracity of a writer. You could argue that they had better, or they're going to have more stories like this one. My wife is going to hate me for this, but that is what I believe."
Here's Nan: "Nonfiction is not a single monolithic category as defined by the best-seller list," she said yesterday when asked to comment on her husband's remarks. "Memoir is personal recollection. It is not absolute fact. It's how one remembers what happened. That is different from history and criticism and biography, and they cannot be measured by the same yardstick."
Nan's response is weak. To her, "how one remembers what happened" is the relevant standard for inclusion in a memoir. That's a pretty broad standard. I could remember that, oh, the Holocaust never happened, and write that in a memoir, and according to Nan Talese, that would be a-okay.
Moreover, Frey didn't just misremember what happened; he invented things that never happened, like
a three-month stay in jail for hitting a policeman with a car. That's not a case of getting the details slightly wrong. That's a case of making something up to make your story more dramatic. The intention is not to try to remember as best one can; the only possible intention is to mislead.
Good for Gay Talese. He and William Bastone, editor of
The Smoking Gun, deserve to be recognized for telling the truth about a con.
