Literary Theory

Truth Be Told

By now, we’re all familiar with Oprah’s public flogging of James Frey. It’s been covered ad nauseum in the press. Certainly, for many people it has awakened a wicked sense of schadenfreude, that someone who was literally elevated to millionairehood by the accident of Oprah’s taking a liking to the story being told, has been brought so low. Whether Frey deserves the kind of praise for his writing that she initially bestowed on him is ultimately not for me to say. I know what I like, and I have accepted that the < ahref="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312422180/sr=1-1/qid=1138553046/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4401809-4536825?%5Fencoding=UTF8">books that I find deserving of praise are not the stuff of New York Times bestseller lists. It’s doubtful you’ll ever find a book that set me on fire listed at 30 percent off at Target.

But I’ve found the Frey saga fascinating. I don’t feel duped: I never read the book. Oprah’s choices have been fairly predictable. She is someone who likes a redemption narrative. Redemption narratives are great—who doesn’t like a protagonist who gets to rise from the dead—but life is seldom like that. The people I know who have come back from the pit tell amazing tales of suffering, but I have yet to meet a single one whose post-horror life has been all sweetness and joy. No pretty packages. No neatly tied up endings. Life simply goes on. And on. But as a consequence, I tend to prefer novels or creative non-fiction where it’s not clear what lies in store for the main character other than more mess. Mess, like everything else, is cyclic.