Writer James Frey to Add Author's Note to Contested Bestseller

By Edward Nawotka

Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Author James Frey will add an author's note to future editions of his contested book, ``A Million Little Pieces,'' his publisher said today.

The news of the addendum was issued in an e-mailed statement by the Doubleday Books imprint of Random House, a unit of Bertelsmann AG. In an interview, Alison Rich, director of publicity for Doubleday, wouldn't comment on what the note will say.

The Web site thesmokinggun.com alleged that in the memoir the author exaggerated his run-ins with the police and the jail time he served. A story on the site said Frey fabricated his involvement in a 1986 train crash that killed two schoolmates in Michigan.

Doubleday has defended the book, which was initially submitted to publishers as a work of fiction, saying, ``The power of the overall reading experience is such that the book remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story for millions of readers.''

Television talk show host Oprah 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 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.''

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.''

Poker Man's Gamble, Happiness as History, Parisian Luck: Books

Poker Man's Gamble, Happiness as History, Parisian Luck: Books

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Novelist James McManus understands odds. A semiprofessional poker player, he described his fifth-place finish in the 2000 World Series of Poker in ``Positively Fifth Street.''

McManus also knows the deck is stacked against him when it comes to his health. His family has a history of heart attacks, he says: ``Each drag off a spliff or a cigarette, each mouthful of garlic mashed potatoes or Billecart-Salmon brut deducts x minutes, y seconds'' from his life, he writes in his memoir ``Physical'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 253 pages, $24).

After turning 52, McManus checked into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for an ``executive'' check-up. For $8,484.25, doctors gave him a colonoscopy, dermatological and eye exams, blood and urine tests, a full-body scan and counseling. He was ``reamed, steamed and dry cleaned,'' and told to curtail his bad habits, he writes.

Yet McManus persists in his mostly sedentary, indulgent lifestyle, knowing he's lessening his chances of seeing either of his two pre-teen daughters ``speak as valedictorian of her law-school class, get married, score her first goal.''

Such reflections aside, this book is no ode to middle-aged regret. McManus's overarching aesthetic is macho sarcasm: He even fantasizes that the Mayo nurses will turn him into an S&M sex slave. Nor does he shy from intimate topics, such as his 22-year-old son's suicide and whether he should get a vasectomy.

Stem-Cell Gaffe

Throughout, McManus sustains a healthy skepticism of the medical edifice, questioning, for example, whether anti-depressants helped drive his son over the edge. Yet he also offers praise where it's due, particularly to the Mayo, a not-for-profit institution.

McManus's only major gaffe comes when he discusses his 30-year- old daughter's diabetes, which he believes might be cured through advances in stem-cell research. Turning polemic, the author excoriates the U.S. government for curtailing such research and lionizes South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk who in 2004 claimed to have cloned a human embryo and extracted stem cells from it. Oops. In December, Hwang disclosed that his claim was ``faked,'' undermining the author's argument.

`Happiness: A History'

McManus is a shrewd hedonist: He wants to balance fun with virtue. Yet it would be unfair to dismiss him as a frat-boy philosopher. Similar concerns have occupied thinkers through the ages, says Darrin McMahon in his prosaic, yet edifying ``Happiness: A History'' (Atlantic Monthly, 542 pages, $27.50).

The author surveys competing strains of Western thought on ``what constitutes the good life,'' starting with Plato and Aristotle and ending with Samuel Beckett and psychopharmacology.

The word ``happiness'' derives from the Middle English and Old Norse word ``happ,'' meaning chance or luck, writes McMahon, a history professor at Florida State University. For the Greeks, happiness was a gift from the gods. It remained in the hands of the divine until the Enlightenment, when humans took responsibility.

Unfortunately this did as much bad as good, writes McMahon, as evidenced by the Nazis and other murderous political movements of the 20th century. This ``dark side'' of the human pursuit of happiness produces suffering, rather than alleviating it.

Surprised by Joy

Sometimes joy is unanticipated. Jeremy Mercer, a Canadian crime reporter, was on the run from a death threat when he landed in Paris just days before the city center was packed with millennium revelers on the last night of 1999.

In his memoir ``Time Was Soft There'' (St. Martin's, 260 pages, $23.95), Mercer describes how one day, broke and walking the streets, he ducked into Shakespeare & Co., the beloved English-language bookstore opposite Notre Dame. He was invited upstairs for tea and soon after moved into the building for a five-month stay.

Shakespeare & Co. is known to anyone who's gone to Paris to find his inner Hemingway. Originally owned by Sylvia Beach, who published James Joyce's ``Ulysses,'' the shop was closed during World War II. It reopened in 1951, under the ownership of American George Whitman, an avowed Communist who wound up installing 13 beds upstairs and giving lodging to some 40,000 wandering writers in 54 years.

Mercer assisted the 92-year-old Whitman with customers. Otherwise, the rent was modest: Make your bed every morning, treat the other eccentric residents kindly and read a book a day -- preferably something by Bernard Malamud or Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In the denouement, Mercer repays George by reuniting him with his estranged daughter. This is a heartfelt paean to literary dreamers and the unique charm of that magical place.