Day 97: I have to say this

Okay — I know I’m supposed to be writing about my writing and not ranting on about other people, but I have to get something off my chest.br /br /About the Frey Matter, i.e. does it matter whether James Frey made up some of the “facts” in his best-selling memoir about his battle with addiction “A Million Little Pieces”, including the section where he claims he was incarcerated and unable to do anything when his girlfriend became distraught and committed suicide.br /br /Are people crazy? Of course it matters. As one unnamed book editor in the a href=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011102367.html” Washington Post/a put it in paraphrase: How you describe your mother is subject to interpretation, but the content of legal records and police reports is not.br /br /When we fail to tell the truth about our lives in our memoirs, we’re perpetrating fraud. Of course emotional truth is important. Of course our memories are imperfect and we’re subject to changing things in our heads. br /br /That’s not the point. br /br /There’s a huge difference between poetic license and saying that something literally happened to you that did not. Kama sutra contrary to popular perception is not porn generic viagra pills (nope not joking). Fertilization is a process which caused evolution. viagra sales in canada Too many side effects can tablet sildenafil be raised due to excessive masturbation. Online pharmacies offer many categories of medicines for heart, liver, kidney, viagra in italy diabetes, cancer, sleep, etc. And while Frey’s book may well be insightful and brilliant, it’s also in part fiction. And the audience deserved to know that. All it would have taken was a line or two in the front — “some situations have been altered for dramatic effect”. br /br /As someone who has written a memoir piece for a magazine, I know that memory can be a tricky thing. Each of us have stories we tell about ourselves, repeating them so often that they become rote cliches. Digging beneath that to find the literal and emotional truths, going beyond the pat polite answers to find the rich fabric of true memory is hard. Especially when the memories hurt.br /br /Frey betrays his work by betraying his audience and not putting a disclaimer on the original.