Liars are everywhere. The only real way to separate liars from people who tell the truth is to hope the liars get busted.
Is lying more commonplace today than it was 50 years ago, a century ago, a thousand years ago? I don’t think anyone can answer that.
Today, when court, police, marriage and thousands of other public records are easily found online, it’s easier to weed out a liar.
That’s what did in James Frey, a man who wrote a book filled with distortions surrounding his addictions and tried to pass it off as his life story.
Oprah Winfrey praised “A Million Little Pieces,” and the book became a best seller. That same spotlight led to Frey’s unraveling.
When he wrote the memoir, which was published in 2003, Frey probably never imagined journalists at the website thesmokinggun.com would – after a fruitless search for all of Frey’s prison mug shots – eventually launch an investigation that would reveal contradictions in his account.
Turns out Frey wildly exaggerated and told several out-and-out lies: He never struck an Ohio police officer with his car, he didn’t commit numerous felonies, and he spent fewer than three hours, not three months, in jail.
Frey admitted the lies on Oprah’s nationally syndicated talk show last week. But why did so many people believe his far-fetched, clichéd stories in the first place?
Frey tells of being an alcoholic for 10 years and a crack addict for three, and how he hit bottom before he decided to stop – on his own.
He starts by recounting the day he came out of an alcohol-induced blackout, peering through the slits of his swollen, black eyes and realizing he was on an airplane.
He says his shirt was speckled with blood, urine and vomit. He was missing four front teeth. We’re supposed to believe anyone would put him on a plane in this condition?
Readers of fiction often submit themselves to “suspension of disbelief” – the idea that you sometimes need to overlook logic or reality to enjoy the plot.
That shouldn’t hold true for readers of nonfiction. Yet sometimes in our quest for an incredible story, we overlook signs of deceit.
We want to believe self-abusive people raging with hatred can dramatically change their lives in a few years. If they can do it, it makes us believe we can too.
The danger in believing fairy tales about recovery is we may turn to the majority of addicts who are still going in and out of rehab and wonder, in frustration: What’s taking them so long?
In his book, Frey is dismissive of 12-step programs, preferring to end his alcohol and crack cocaine addictions “my way” – whatever that means. He never really explains how he learned to remain clean.
Anyone who works with people who have chronic mental health problems and are addicted to drugs and alcohol knows they can’t just snap out of it because they want to.
Wouldn’t it be great if it were that easy?
We were duped by Frey, but we wanted his story to be true.
So did Frey. In a promotional CD, he said: “I don’t think there have been any realistic books about addiction. Everything I’ve read either romanticizes it or dilutes it or portrays in a way that isn’t in touch with the horrible reality of what it was really like.”
To Oprah, and millions of TV viewers, Frey admitted that facts had been “altered” but that his story is true.
“I don’t think it’s a novel,” he told her. “I still think it’s a memoir.”
Now he’s only lying to himself.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
