Truthiness

On December 23rd, I announced that I had begun reading “A Million Little Pieces”, a memoir by James Frey. On January 6th, the Smoking Gun announced that many of the facts written in the memoir were actually not factual. This last announcement has caused a lot of discussion and controversy about the book. A couple of the questions that have been raised are “what is truth?” and “who is responsible?”

I was very upset when I first learned that much of the book had been fabricated. My experience in reading the book was a very difficult one, as it delved into the topic of addiction. In reading this book, I went through a range of emotions as addiction is a sensitive and real issue in my life. So it was upsetting to learn that the author stretched, and in some incidents changed, the truth in order to make his “character” more heroic.

And I find it interesting that James refers to the people in his book as characters, instead of people. I would think that in writing a memoir, there would be a constant understanding that these people do exist and they did experience what he wrote about. To refer to them as characters just removes the reality from the people, and I am not sure why he chooses to do that.

So what is truth? I have read some books on addiction and on being a child of an alcoholic, and one of the main problems that addicts and children of addicts face is they don’t understand what “truth” is. Addicts live their life in a state of altered truth. They twist and contort reality in order to make their actions more acceptable and less harmful. They also tell lie upon lie in order to cover up their actions and addictions. So children of addicts are raised without understanding what “truth” is, because their parental role model(s) don’t live with a complete sense of truth.

I do think that our memories can deceive us. Our minds, as a coping mechanism, have the ability to filter the truth in order to make it less painful. But I also think that we have the ability to see the truth, completely. And we have the ability to decide whether we want to purposefully alter that truth or not. I believe that James Frey altered his truth in order to sell more books. And for that, I do not respect him.

And that brings up the next question, who is responsible for this? Of course I believe that James had a huge responsibility to tell the truth in his memoir or to re-classify his book as “based on a true story”. But I also believe the publishing company, Random House/Doubleday, had a responsibility to check the facts. If they are publishing a piece as non-fiction or memoir, I believe they must do the proper research in order to have the right to label it as such. Just as we expect journalists to perform fact-checks on their non-fiction pieces, I believe we should expect the same from authors, editors, and publishers.

But I can’t help but wonder if society is also to blame, just a little bit. I feel that we have grown to accept living in a state of truthiness. (Truthiness being defined as "quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true".) We have allowed truth to be altered, and yet still refer to it as truth. Reality shows are a perfect example. I watch Dancing with the Stars, and I know that Master P is not a good dancer and yet other people are voted off the show before him. Why? Because Master P brings in better ratings.
We can watch Jessica and Nick, on their reality show, laughing and cuddling and running off into the bedroom to make love, and yet once the show is canceled we watch them file for divorce. And yet their show is still called a reality show.

So perhaps, we as viewers/readers need to strengthen our definition of truth and reality. And that can be difficult, because it would also require us to strengthen our own truth, which could be a painful and scary request.

And perhaps I need to stop hoping that the addict gets better. I read this book with the idea that this addict faced his family and friends, and admitted his wrong doings. This addict apologized and made strides towards becoming a better, honest, sober person. Maybe I need to stop wasting emotion by hoping the addict becomes cured.

And finally, I do think that James Frey, although sober, still has the personality of an addict. He obviously is still stretching and altering truth, in order to make his sobriety seem more heroic. He almost romanticized addiction and recovery. And then when questioned on the facts, he just denied, denied, denied.

I know that story all too well.