Memoirs: What’s expected

RE “The Truth About Memoirs,” by Susan Salter Reynolds, Jan. 13, and “Desire for Fact Lies in a Million Pieces,” by Tim Rutten, Jan. 14: I’m getting really tired of the attacks on James Frey. I read “A Million Little Pieces” two years ago and had my own doubts as to whether Frey could have done all the things, used all the drugs and had all the trouble he said he did and still survived to write the book. But that’s not what mattered to me.

What made the book emotionally moving, intense and valid to me was the description of the recovery/relapse process and Frey’s struggle to maintain control over his addictions. His account essentially matches not only almost everything else I’ve read about substance abuse and recovery but, more important, everything I’ve ever heard from friends who have struggled, successfully or otherwise, to rid themselves of addictions to alcohol or drugs.

MARK GABRISH CONLAN

San Diego

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AS a psychotherapist, I cannot help but to view Frey’s actions through the lens of addiction. Addicts, when they are in their disease, are notorious for shifting the truth if it suits their needs. And Oprah Winfrey, whom I admire and respect, has acted as the ultimate enabler by excusing Frey’s bad behavior, thereby suggesting that lying is OK when, of course, it is not. We teach our children this moral lesson every day. It is as black and white as can be. Frey was knowingly dishonest. He owes the American public an apology.

DANA DOVITCH

Studio City

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THE fault of the Frey “scandal” doesn’t lie with Oprah Winfrey, his publishers or even himself. The fault lies with our society’s insatiable need for the exciting. It is the only way to explain our obsession with reality TV.

Do I think that “Survivor” is “real” or unscripted? Not by a long shot. Do I believe that the people on Jerry Springer are not “actors”? Not even close. To say that one expects that a “memoir” will be the truth and nothing but the truth is naive.

If they had marketed “A Million Little Pieces” as a textbook, then I would have expected a factual account of Frey’s life. But no one is going to buy a “textbook” of Frey’s life. It’s not the “facts” that we are interested in. It is the sensationalism and the marked departure from the mundane experience of our own lives that has sent more than 3 million people to the bookstores.

SARAH MCCORMICK

Pacific Palisades

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I think what is needed for the literature area is a category borrowed from the motion picture industry, in which a book like Frey’s would be grouped under the “based on a true story” section.

MIKE KILGORE

Los Angeles