This is kind of junk if it is true. It seems that James Frey may have embellished his reminiscences according to some charges leveled by the Smoking Gun.
Central to Frey's book, published in 2003, is his assertion that he was charged with assaulting an Ohio police officer with his car, with inciting a riot, with possession of crack cocaine and felony drunk driving -- charges that he wrote resulted in a three-month prison term.
The Smoking Gun, owned by Court TV, reported that most of those claims were not borne out by police records or by interviews with police and court officials. The Web site published the police officer's report of the key 1992 incident which shows Frey was found drunk in his car without a driver's license but did not, as he wrote, serve time the incident or behave in the outrageous manner portrayed in his book.
These seem to be pretty serious charges if they are true and Doubleday is offering a refund for everyone who bought the book directly from the publisher. This is another case of the internet (not the blogosphere unfortunately) finding potential fraud where the main stream media fears to tread. In years past this kind of investigative journalism would be done by 20/20 or some other news show and not by some web page.
I wonder why this is? Is there too much money involved or would it be the wrath of the Oprah that keeps them from looking into things like this? It seems that Doubleday is owned by Bertelsmann AG which seems to have no connection to Oprah at all. However lots of the books on her Book club list seem to come from Doubleday or from Random House which is another Bertelsmann subsidiary. I didn't check them all but many of these Book Club books are Doubleday or Random House books.
Perhaps the main stream media didn't want to upset a good thing by looking too deeply into an Oprah Book Club book. I mean the Oprah Book Club has been quite a boon to the publishing industry providing a much needed boost to their bottom line. It has also made people interested in reading that may not be interested normally. The Book Club seems to serve the same purpose as the Harry Potter books do for younger readers. It has made people read a book instead of watching TV or partaking in one of the millions of distractions we have out there.
Perhaps too much investigation into the facts surrounding one these books will upset that sort of thing. So the MSM takes a pass while the internet (which really has nothing to lose) goes after it with abandon. I wonder if Oprah is going to come out for or against this Frey guy?
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