James Frey wrote a book, A Million Little Pieces, based on his journey through drug addiction and recovery. He didn’t write it as a memoir, a novel or a self-help book. He just wrote a book… that someone wanted to publish. They published it as a memoir. As far as I’m concerned this was his only mistake. He should have spoken up about the genre… I guess.
Oprah read it, and then made it one of her book club selections, which is like a Pulitzer for writers that want to actually sell books that people will read. He was golden.
It really is a great book, next to no one disagrees with that to this day. His apparent contempt for punctuation alone earned my eternal thanks, and it got me through what I now see was a touch of postpartum. (I knew I was supposed to want to hold my baby, but I didn’t want to hold my baby, but I knew I should hold my baby, so I forced myself to… with my baby in one hand and A Million Little Pieces in the other to fend off the boredom.).
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