Oprah Winfrey Defends Author Frey's `A Million Little Pieces'

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Television talk show host Oprah
Winfrey rose to the defense of author James Frey, who is alleged
by the Web site thesmokinggun.com to have manufactured portions of
his bestselling memoir ``A Million Little Pieces.''
Winfrey phoned into CNN's ``Larry King Live'' television show
Wednesday night, as Frey was reaching the end of his first
interview since thesmokinggun.com alleged on Sunday that the
author had exaggerated his run-ins with the police and the jail
time he had served.
The piece also alleged that Frey fabricated his involvement
in a 1986 train crash that killed two schoolmates in Michigan.
``What is relevant is that he was a drug addict,'' Winfrey
said, and that he ``stepped out of that history to be the man he
is today and to take that message to save other people and allow
them to save themselves.''
Winfrey waited until less than a minute before the show ended
to phone in, saying she wanted to hear what Frey himself said
before commenting. When Larry King announced that he would extend
the program for a few moments because he had Winfrey on the line,
a gasp -- from whom was unclear -- could be heard off camera.
Speaking with her trademark exasperation, Winfrey said that
she and her television producers ``support the book because we
recognize that there have been thousands and hundreds of thousands
of people who've been changed by it.'' She sounded impatient with
the controversy, calling it ``much ado about nothing.''

Publishing Phenomenon

Had Winfrey challenged, condemned or even expressed
disappointment in Frey, it could have had dramatic consequences
for his career. Winfrey turned ``A Million Little Pieces'' into a
publishing phenomenon when she made the memoir the selection for
her book club late last year.
The book has subsequently sold some 1.7 million copies,
according to Nielsen BookScan, and was the second-bestselling book
last year in the U.S., bested only by J.K. Rowling's ``Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince''
During the ``Larry King Live'' show, Frey -- known to his
readers as a tattooed tough guy -- suppressed his customary
swagger. He said he had embellished some scenes in the book, yet
he defended this as a literary convention.

`Emotional Truth'

``In the memoir genre, the writer usually takes liberties,''
he said. ``The emotional truth is there.''
Frey's publisher is the Doubleday Books imprint of Random
House, a unit of Bertelsmann AG. Random House said in a statement
Wednesday that it would refund the money of anyone who purchased
the book ``directly from us,'' either over the phone or through
the company's Web site.
This represents a fraction of the more than 3 million copies
of the book sold through stores and online retailers such as
Amazon.com Inc.
It's not uncommon for memoirists to be accused of being
economical with the facts, though it's usually the author's
immediate family that takes umbrage.
The daughter of author Tony Hendra, for example, was quoted
in a 2004 interview with the New York Times as saying that her
father abused her as a child and had omitted that from his book,
``Father Joe.'' She subsequently detailed the allegations in her
own memoir, ``How to Cook Your Daughter.''
Hendra has denied the allegations.
Frey's mother, for one, is standing by her son. Lynne Frey
appeared alongside the author on ``Larry King Live,'' saying she
and her husband were disappointed that their son's book had been
attacked.
``We believe in James,'' she said, ``and we believe in the
book. The book stands on its own.''